The ending of Soviet communism, and with it of the Soviet Union itself, freed Russian journalism from the closely policed necessity to observe ideological norms and Party proscriptions. Reporting was freer to attempt to tell the truth as the journalist saw it, and comment was no longer monopolised by the dictates of the Communist Party.

The view taken by Soviet President and Communist Party leader (1985-1991) Mikhail Gorbachev was that journalism should serve the goals of perestroika (rebuilding of the economy) and of glasnost (roughly, openness). Since there were no precise guidelines for this, journalistic practice in the Gorbachev era went well beyond the bounds which Gorbachev set; it opened up previously forbidden areas, as he wished - but more, and more rapidly, than he had bargained for. The bolder reformist spirits harshly criticised those who hampered reforms - and soon turned their critical guns on him, as he strove to keep a middle ground.

Thus post-Soviet Russian journalism had both Soviet roots and radical, Western influences. Newspapers and magazines expressed a very wide range of opinions - from hard-line Communism to neo-liberalism to hard-line nationalism - the first and last of these showing many similarities. Television, both state and privately owned, was often outspoken, investigative and critical - especially, in the case of the privately owned NTV (the "N" standing for Nezavisimaya, or Independent), of the conduct of the first Chechen war, from 1994-96.

The attitude of the authorities was to let both flowers and weeds bloom - except at the crucial election period, in 1996, when the media owners and bosses were brought into the Presidential camp and told their assistance was vital to avoid the election of a Communist administration. The price they exacted for their support for what turned out to be a second term for President Boris Yeltsin was privatisation of the most valuable assets in Russia - above all, energy. It was a Faustian bargain, most of all for the journalists; they abandoned what existed of their efforts at post-Soviet objectivity and balance, and found they had devalued themselves in the eyes of many of their fellow citizens.

At the same time, the Communist/nationalist view of the end of the Soviet Union, the free market reforms in Russia and the aping of Western, especially American, practice, lost popularity across society, including intellectual society. The ascension to power of the former KGB officer Vladimir Putin, and with him a number of other senior KGB officials who had been his colleagues, ushered in a period - until now - in which the news and comment media take a strongly patriotic line; are supportive of the authorities; critical of the West; largely devoid of critical comment or indeed of reporting of such comment.

This is particularly true of television, where there are few independent voices. Newspapers, magazines and websites are, in several instances, oppositionist and critical - though at some danger to the journalists who work for them. The calculation of the authorities, fairly overtly, is that the liberal/intellectual/oppositionist society is relatively small and ineffectual: that if it has media which serve it with fodder for its opinions, these  do no great harm and promote the image of diversity.

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The general explanation for this state of affairs in the West is that the Putin, now Putin/Medvedev, administrations have clamped down on the media. But this is only part of the story. The other part is the responsibility of the Axess Project on Russia to tell.

That story lies in the changing character of the media-intellectual class in the mid-late 1990s. From - in general terms - having espoused a radical vision of Western-oriented modernisation, their leading lights shifted to a national patriotic view - albeit one which also allows for modernisation. Those who were the leaders of thought and expression in the years of perestroika and of the new Russia have now either changed, or have been pushed aside to relatively minor positions.

The story would be told through leading characters, especially those who control the mass media outlets. It would also be the stories of leading intellectuals, newspaper and magazine editors and Kremlin advisors; it would follow what had happened to those reformist journalists who did not change, and what is the position and influence of the oppositionist media.

The main thrust of this project is the story of the Russian media, but we would also reflect on the progress or otherwise of media in some of the former Soviet states – as, for example, Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia.

Its main theme would be the formation of a new media order, governed by a new understanding of Russian - and world - society; an analysis of how that was built up and is maintained; a description of how the message is broadcast, and its effects.