‘I'm not going to write about Putin's daughters’ An interview with Esquire's new chief editor, Ksenia Sokolova

The new chief editor of the Russian edition of Esquire is Ksenia Sokolova, a journalist who's previously worked at GQ and Snob. Her appointment is unprecedented not just because it means a woman will be heading a magazine for men, but also because Sokolova is simultaneously active in politics. She's even running for a seat in the State Duma as a member of the “Party of Growth.” Meduza's Aleksandr Gorbachev sat down with Sokolova and asked her about censorship, her return to journalism, a possible conflict of interest, and the meaning of elections.

Ksenia Sokolova graduated from the Literary Institute. In 2003, she came to work for GQ, where she later became the head of the magazine's special projects department and a deputy editor. While at GQ, Sokolova was responsible for several bombshell stories, including a report from the scene of a terrorist attack in Beslan, a profile of the Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov, and reports from New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and from North Korea, as well as work about prisons where convicts serve out life sentences. Sokolova also gained a reputation for being one of the best interviewers in Russia. Working alongside Ksenia Sobchak, she led tough conversations with various representatives of Russia's political and media elite. 

In 2007, a collection of Sokolova's articles called “Revolutionary Glamor” was published. In 2012, following former GQ chief editor Nikolai Uskov, Sokolova left the magazine to join Mikhail Prokhorov's media group “Zhivi!” where she became the vice president, and her articles starting appearing on Snob. In January 2016, she left Snob. In June, the Party of Growth revealed that Sokolova would joined the ticket in upcoming parliamentary elections. She's also running for a State Duma seat in a single-mandate district of Moscow. 

For the past six months, ever since you left Snob, you've given a few interviews where you said you'd reached a professional dead end and didn't plan to return to journalism. What was the dead end about?

The whole thing was just about being practical. I'd gotten used to moving forward. I think this is what's typical for a lot of people. And suddenly I was just looking at the ceiling. Considering what I was doing before, it would have made sense to continue, for example, if I could host a show on television, or work in some kind of large state news agency. But I couldn't do this for ideological reasons. After all, nobody over there ever called me up about a job, thanks to my relative unreliability. Remember like in “The Little Prince”? And so he said goodbye to a brilliant career as a painter. 

And what's changed now?

I simply didn't expect such an offer, like one from Esquire. This magazine has never in its history had a woman as chief editor. I never imagined anything like this.

But you presumably could have imagined yourself heading some kind of women's glossy magazine?

I have absolutely no interest in any women's glossy magazines. Before, it would have meant nice pay, at least, but now, thanks to prices after the [financial] crisis, I couldn't be less interested, no matter how you look at it. But Esquire is a chance for me to become part of a legend. Because when I was still studying at the Literary Institute in literary translation from English, my teacher, Viktor Petrovich Golyshev, a brilliant translator, and I used to study Esquire magazine. This is the place Capote published “Breakfast at Tiffany's,” when Harper's Bazaar didn't take it. This is where a new kind of journalism started—a genre that I loved most of all, and the reason that I switched from translation to journalism. And now fate has actually presented this opportunity.

How did the opportunity come about in the first place? Inviting a woman to work as chief editor of a men's magazine—it's a pretty revolutionary idea. 

I'll let you in on a terrible secret: the whole story with Esquire started with a phone call from an unhappy reader. It turned out that he knew both me and the company's management [Sanoma Independent Media].

So I assume this reader wasn't just unhappy, but he's also quite well to do.

Absolutely, yes. He called me and asked if I was on board. I said it sounded impossible, that there's no way it could happen. This reader turned out to care a great deal, and it all came together. And then I couldn't refuse, because just by virtue of this being me and this being Esquire, this collaboration could produce some really interesting results.

How do you see the Russian edition of Esquire at the moment? What kind of magazine is it right now?

It's a magazine with a drastically shrinking readership at the moment. The shareholders want us to expand the audience, and make the project more commercially successful. Accordingly, I've got to figure out how to do journalism that fits the current moment—journalism that will be in demand. Because it's obvious that right now we're in an era when a new kind of journalism is forming. The days of big texts, deep reports, and long reads are in the past. There's just no time for it. 

But I think that, insofar as Esquire is connected to the industry of luxury consumption, it makes sense to resurrect the original formula invented by the gentlemen who created this magazine—to create a type of journalism or a luxury quality of literature, but one that's appropriate for a monthly magazine. We tried to reproduce this formula with Uskov at GQ, and when it worked it was very successful. And now I think we need to come up with some new-new form of journalism—one that will match what is advertised in Esquire. 

I don't quite agree with you about long reads. In America right now, they're enjoying a pretty remarkable renaissance, actually.

Yes, yes. I've see it happening with my own eyes.

But you just said that long reads have become irrelevant.

No, that was just the first part of my thoughts. They're absolutely not losing relevance—on the contrary, they're making a comeback. But look, the States are obviously ahead of us, right? Over there, the pendulum has already swung, but here it hasn't. Right now, in Russia, everyone is just sitting around, thinking about how to cram in more of everything for the reader, in order to squeeze out a few more views. But the pendulum is swinging. And maybe I'm swinging it, because this is the kind of stuff that I know and can do best of all. I worked as a reporter for a long time, and I was interested in painstaking, complicated projects. Working on these reports, I didn't spare any time, money, or energy. And when I came to an agreement with Esquire's shareholders, I made sure to note that I'm going to be reporting—that I won't just be an administrator, and that I'm going to be a journalist myself. This is a challenge, of course. It will be a test, of course. But in my mind I'm tracing a clear line from Esquire's founding in 1933, to the publication of Capote in 1954, to the current revival of the long read. I hope we can make the journey, because people are tired of getting literary and journalistic fast food. Unfortunately, the niche where this kind of high quality content lives has narrowed in Russia.

And what about this niche have we lost specifically? What traditions do you mean?

Right now, I see enormous enthusiasm for mass culture, and a very narrow stratum of people who are interested in serious literature or go to the theater for anything really interesting.

No, I'm asking about achievements in journalism. Are you talking about Russkii Telegraf? Soviet traditions?

Well, sure, let's say. There was a very interesting and high-quality Soviet journalism. 

And Esquire today doesn't measure up to that level?

I think there's just been different aims. There was no effort to reach a certain bar. The magazine has a very narrow audience...

You keep saying this. What's the reason for this narrow audience?

The shareholders define it as a hipster audience. I haven't conducted a study on this, but that's probably what you can call it. In my view, since the magazine is still a commercial project, it can't depend solely on this group, because it doesn't buy the products whose advertisements keep the magazine afloat. And the circulation doesn't increase because the audience is limited. And so there can be no progress. So we need to expand our audience.

Do you think you can radically increase the readership of a printed magazine in 2016?

I don't know how radically we can raise it, but I think an increase is possible. You know, in the six months that I wasn't working, friends were always coming to me and saying that there was nothing for them to read in magazines today. And this wasn't because I'd stopped writing—but for some reason there simply aren't magazines that people wait around for. But there is a demand for interesting reports and long reads. I have a feeling that readers are ready to spend money on this. 

And they're ready to spend money on a print edition?

Yes. There's such a thing as a status symbol. Print is still a status symbol. Clearly, the relationship between the Internet and print is something very subtle that's changing nearly every day. For example, look at the Americans, and what new formats they've got now. It's obvious that we're in a situation where we can invent a lot of new things.

Do you buy print magazines?

You know, with me, I'm a bit of a cobbler without shoes. I haven't bought them for a long time.

And what about your caring friends?

They buy them. And here it's important to note that people start to associate with a magazine and await each copy, if the magazine can hit certain marks. And I think that today here in Russia a lot of these accomplished people, thanks to our “indifferent reader,” find themselves in a state of uncertainty, and they can't articulate for themselves what should be done next, given the new “crisis reality.” And they're frustrated—especially the men—because by their nature they tend to take responsibility for what happens. And now reality is changing so fast and unpredictably that it's hard to cope with these processes. So people need some new approach or they need their positions to be reinforced. And I think this magazine can contribute here somehow. 

You've mentioned men. Your new position is something of a feminist triumph: a woman at the head of a men's magazine.

You know, I'd rather think of this in the historical and literary context that we discussed. Formally speaking, this is a feminist victory, but I didn't think about this very much when I agreed to take the job.

And what today is a men's magazine, especially in the case of Esquire? In Russia, this term is still usually associated in one way or another with the objectification of the female body, but Esquire has never been about this.

Such magazines emerged as appendages of the fashion industry. Women's fashion—women's magazines. Men's fashion—men's magazines. That's all. This is the practical side of the issue, but using this framework you can string in far more serious things. Fashion and consumption are the basis and the commercial component. The the rest is the superstructure that corresponds to the times. 

That being said, Russian Esquire, as [former chief editor] Filipp Bakhtin built it, has essentially been a socio-political magazine with a fashion appendage. Do you want to change this?

I simply don't think of fashion as an appendage to the content of such projects; I see it as the commercial foundation. If a magazine doesn't bring in money, it doesn't develop. You can do three pages about fashion, and 120 pages about society and politics, but it doesn't work.

But it worked when the magazine first launched?

There was always as much fashion content as there needed to be, in order to make a profit. But in terms of image, yes. Like we did at GQ, Bakhtin found the kind of content that suited the times. Yesterday, [Echo of Moscow chief editor] Alexey Venediktov asked me why my project with Ksenia Sobchak was shut down. I told him that then, when the screws of censorship were being twisted only softly, and the hand on your throat was resting quite gently, the sight of two young women putting cheeky questions to odious characters was all very appropriate. But! The times changed, and so we need something new.

So censorship has become tighter, and therefore socio-political journalism is no longer needed? I don't quite see the logic.

You know, back then, we saw that an era of relative censorship was coming, and we understood that we could swing somehow, to pull the situation in different directions. To oppose the crackdown, there's laughter and carnival, or there's the rather serious fronde that Bakhtin went with. Today, neither a fronde nor laughter is an answer to the challenge now before us. Nobody pays attention to either one. We need some different kind of response, and this is what I'm thinking about now.

Well let me ask you something specific. Esquire has published reports about the battle route traveled by a Russian soldier killed in eastern Ukraine, and about the funeral of an agent from Russia's Military Intelligence Service killed in Syria. Are you saying this kind of journalism is no longer needed?

I think you always need military reports. Always. We should be putting those out, and people should know about this. But that's not all you need. A magazine is a collection of different elements, you see?

The censorship crackdown that you mentioned—does this concern Esquire or not?

I'm telling you from experience. At GQ, we did some very bold things, but personally, for me, for Ksenia Sokolova, I never once encountered any censorship. Why? Because I wasn't speaking freely on Channel One or the newspaper Komosmolskaya Pravda, but in a magazine with a circulation of just 100,000 copies—a magazine that the people in the Kremlin read themselves. It was this insider thing that didn't threaten anybody because of its small circulation. 

But you want to increase Esquire's circulation!

Listen, we're still not going to be a major concern for big censorship. As [Anatoly] Chubais said, Russia is a very large country. The authorities are interested in circulations in the millions, and circulations of 50,000 or 100,000—it's all so... I mean, maybe if somebody did something astoundingly bold, but I don't even know what that could be.

You know, of course. Anything about Putin's daughters.

Yes! That! Putin's daughters. I was just discussing this recently with a particularly prominent individual, who's now often cited as “a source.” He told me, “What censorship? There's no censorship. You can't write about Putin's two daughters, and maybe also about...”

Also about what else?

Well, remember when that scandal with Roldugin and the Panama offshores was roaring.

So you can't write about Putin's daughters or friends, and maybe about other people, whom we don't know?

Well, about any of Putin's people.

Putin has a pretty big circle of acquaintances.

Well, you've got to write about some of them, sure. You need to watch what you say. These people over there think that a journalist's body should have developed some special elements that start vibrating when this issue comes up. 

I'd think they'd start vibrating out of excitement?

They should be vibrating out of excitement, but just look at how things ended in the situation at RBC.

So you've got a “solid double line,” too, it turns out. 

I'm not going to write about Putin's daughters—I'll tell you that in earnest.

Meaning, if a person comes to you with an excellent report about Katerina Tikhonova, you'll say no?

[I'll say] no. Take it to, I don't know, [the newspaper] Novaya Gazeta. 

You could send them to Meduza, too.

Yes! There you go. Your colleagues can send me a thank-you bouquet.

Deal.

But if, you know, I decide that I've somehow had enough of the shareholders, and “let the whole thing be shut down,” then of course I'll publish this sort of thing. Listen, I really don't think it's right, this approach where you ignore the reality that exists around you. I don't ignore it.

And you think that the range of topics that's off limits is pretty narrow?

Well, I was just quoting my source. But in principle it really is just certain things related to the president's personal phobias. He's genuinely afraid, when people shine a light on his children's lives. There are certain reasons for this, but I won't get into that. That would lead to a catastrophe not just for me, Ksenia Sokolova the Honest Journalist, but also for my publication.

Your appointment to Esquire is quite unprecedented not just because of your gender, but also because you're actually running for a seat in the State Duma on the ticket of the Party of Growth. You don't see a conflict of interest here?

Absolutely not. Moreover, for me, the two things are connected. Formally speaking, there is a conflict, in the sense that I don't have the right to work a salaried position, if I'm elected. But I've already had consultations about this, and I can remain chief editor on a voluntary basis. And that's what I plan to do. I don't see a conflict, because I'm running as a member of a party that represents the interests of business people, the intellectual elite, and really just young people throughout Russia. This is exactly whom I want to add to Esquire's growing audience. 

But the party is still a player in the reality that you write about. Let's say a coworker comes to you and says he's got a transcript of a meeting inside the presidential administration, where Boris Titov [the creator of the Party of Growth] reports to [Putin's deputy chief of staff, Vyacheslav] Volodin about certain completed assignments. And let's say it's an interesting, lively dialogue that tells us a lot about Russian politics. What would you do as chief editor?

You describe a rare case. But if it arose, I think I'd publish a story like that.

And what would the party chairman say about this?

Well, he'd say, Ksenia Sokolova, you've gone and lost your mind on us. But you've got to remember that I'm a journalist. I'd publish such a story. On the other hand, you said that he's reporting to Volodin. I doubt that this is happening. 

Well, he himself said that the Kremlin agreed to the creation of this party, and later that week [Irina] Khakamada literally confirmed that it's a “handmade party.”

Oh please, a handmade party? I'll speak for myself, without referring to whatever Irina Khakamada said, with all due respect to her. I'll explain why I'm in this party, and not in the one supported by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and not in the radical opposition. It's because nobody votes for the radical opposition and there's nothing for it to do in the short term. And, as I've said, I don't ignore the surrounding reality. I wouldn't run as a member of [Alexey] Navalny's party or Khodorkovsky's because it's a pointless waste of time. I need results. I don't really share the values of [the political parties] “United Russia” or “LDPR,” but Titov's party seemed to fit.

You don't think it's a liberal “spoiler” created by the Kremlin to give the appearance of competitive elections?

I don't think everything is so primitive. It's obvious that there was approval for the existence of this party, of course. But I don't think they created a straight “handmade party.” I suspect that the situation is more complicated and more difficult, because a large class of people has been deprived of [political] representation. People don't want to vote. What's surprising about the convergence of the radical opposition and the state authorities? Both are propagating the idea that everything is very bad and hopeless, except one side is saying, “There's no more money, but hang in there,” [a reference to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's infamous gaffe] and the other is saying, “They've got the money, but the bloody Putin regime won't give it to you.” It's pure gloom on both flanks. And this is where I connect with Titov. I realize this is hard to believe. But I was sitting where you're sitting now, and Titov was there before me, and he sounded very optimistic. He says, why should we lie down and die. We've got arms. We've got legs. We've got brains, and we can run businesses. This country isn't the most shameful one in the world, and we've got everything we need for prosperity. And his attitude won me over. It coincided with my own.

And you decided to go into politics?

You know, my friends, when we talk about this, they look at me as if I've come down with some terrible disease. And some of them think I'm going to start eating children now—that this is what it means to be in politics in modern-day Russia, that it's something obscene. And when I started to think about this reaction, I realized that, from their perspective, it's wrong to do anything at all. Everything is frozen in some kind of suspended animation. And this is true among officials, too, who themselves say that bureaucrats of different ranks fear responsibility, and that's why no one makes the important decisions. And among my friends, many have spent a long time frozen in a state of inner emigration. I have a different point of view, and if I'm sticking around in Russia, I might as well try to do something. But I won't be eating any kids, for heaven's sake!

That all sounds great, but you of course remember what happened with [the political party] “Right Cause,” which also talked about business and prosperity. In the end, [Mikhail] Prokhorov tried to show just the slightest amount of independence, and he was clobbered for it.

This is the same story as the one about Putin's daughters. Meaning, there are a few delicate things that annoy today's authorities enormously—things you simply don't need to address, if you want to continue on the path you've started.

What delicate things? For instance, right now the “Party of Pensioners” is being wrecked exactly the same way because it included the ex-governor of Chelyabinsk—a former United Russia member—on its party ticket.

And that's why those lovely people from RBC's new leadership put it so poetically when they talked about the “double solid line” that's always moving who knows where.

So there's a system of strict rules that we don't know.

Yes. There are strict rules imposed on us—rules that we don't even know. And, you know, this is an ugly truth, but it can show up absolutely anywhere. Knowing a little bit about what went on backstage here, I'm certain that the people from the Party of Pensioners were warned [about including a former United Russia member]. But they didn't listen. The postman always rings, but next come the tanks and then defeat.

So why do you want to play this game?

I think this is only the initial stage of the game. I'm aware that it could be the final stage, but in order to participate in this game, you've got to play by the rules that exist today. I didn't invent them, and they're probably not the best, but these are the rules we've got. I don't have the power—no one does—to walk straight up and tear them down. I don't wield that kind of weight; I've got to build it—not literally, thank God, but symbolically. And in order to build it up, I need to be very careful, like walking through a minefield. Over here, you've got Putin's daughter, and over here you've got somebody you can't recruit into your political party... There are some bumps in the field you just can't step on. Actually, even telling you all this now, I'm already walking along the very edge.

Okay, but what's it all for? Who has achieved anything good recently as a State Duma deputy?

I believe it's possible. Maybe I won't achieve anything sweeping, but I think I can improve the lives of some people. For a large enough number of people. I'd offer the example of Evgeny Roizman, who was a deputy at first, and now he's the mayor of Yekaterinburg. What is he doing and what would I do in such a position? He's working face-to-face with people and resolving the concrete problems of specific individuals. I think this is where we've got to be active; we should be doing the most concrete kind of work possible. The first step is getting elected to the State Duma. Maybe this time, maybe in four years—because it's a marathon. I realize how state authority is structured in Russia, and I know how poorly I mesh with it. But, on the other hand, you know, I sometimes call myself the “Little Agency for Solving Unsolvable Problems.” This problem [with the government] is almost unsolvable, and so I want to tackle it. 

This text was translated from Russian by Kevin Rothrock.