The Interviews | Evan Gershkovich, Marlon James, CMAT, John Wilson

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SPEAKER_3 (1:01)

You're listening to Comedy Central.

Jon Stewart (1:19)

My guest tonight, a Wall Street Journal reporter.

Jon Stewart (1:23)

He was imprisoned in Russia for 16 months on espionage charges. He writes about his experience in This Cursed Beautiful Land, A Russian-American Story. Please welcome to the program, Evan Gershkovich. The book is phenomenal.

Evan Gershkovich (1:54)

Thank you so much.

Jon Stewart (1:54)

Beautiful writing. I'm telling you, there's an ancient axiom, an old saw, if you will. I don't know why they imprison journalists, because you remember everything.

When are they going to learn?

Evan Gershkovich (2:12)

You know, we'll see. Maybe if the book fails, it's a good idea.

Jon Stewart (2:15)

No! It's not. No! When you were working in Russia for many years.

Evan Gershkovich (2:23)

Five and a half years at that point.

Jon Stewart (2:24)

Five and a half years. Your family background is Russian.

Evan Gershkovich (2:27)

Yep.

Jon Stewart (2:28)

And so you've always been drawn to this land. What drew you to Russia in the first place with that?

Evan Gershkovich (2:33)

I mean, I was working here in New York as a reporter. Well, I guess as a news assistant, I was trying to become a reporter. And Russia, I think, has drawn reporters for forever because of how fascinating it is.

Danger kind of partly it, right? Things are always happening, developing. And so I was seeking out reporting opportunities. And I had colleagues at the... I was working at the New York Times and colleagues were like, you speak Russian, you spoke Russian at home. You know, go take advantage of that. And there was an English language outlet working back then in Russia called the Moscow Times.

Jon Stewart (3:02)

Yes.

Evan Gershkovich (3:02)

They needed a reporter. I went over there and it was incredibly fascinating when I got there. In 2017, that was.

Jon Stewart (3:09)

The writing that you have, I think we obviously have a caricature in this country about what Russia is like. In the way that I think you sort of anywhere you live in middle America, they think of New York. But you can't even walk. I was stabbed four times.

And then they get here and go like, it's just musicals. Like the caricature of Russia. The way you write about Russia in 2017, you don't feel necessarily the autocracy in the way. This is pre-Ukraine invasion. Yes.

Evan Gershkovich (3:40)

Well, I mean, not really, right?

Because Crimea had happened. Eastern Ukraine had already happened. An opposition activist or politician called Boris Nemtsov had already been murdered in the streets near the Kremlin for speaking out against the decision to forcibly annex Crimea. But it's a kind of cosplay democracy at that point. So it's not a democracy, obviously, but they're trying to make it seem like it is. And so they would allow, Russian journalists were facing pressure, but they could work. So independent newsrooms still functioned. The late opposition leader Alexei Navalny was still drumming up protests when I arrived. That was kind of like the big news story when I was there.

Jon Stewart (4:19)

At that time, as an American-Russian journalist, did you feel more in a protected bubble than maybe some of your Russian counterparts might have felt there? Did you feel more protected?

Evan Gershkovich (4:34)

Yeah, absolutely. So foreign journalists were treated as kind of like quasi-diplomats at that point. Right. You know, the Russian government was trying to censor information for its own people, for its own audience. But it wanted to project an image of being a normal country. And so foreign journalists help you do that. You know, you write for the world. The economy is doing fine. It's a normal place. Like, it's a modern, you know, Moscow's modern.