KLIN, Russia — The journalist sat before the investigators last month as they barraged him with questions: Isn’t it true that you provoked police officers to attack you at an opposition rally? Isn’t it true that you wanted to lead protestors to storm government buildings?

“Didn’t you realize that by your actions, you were breaking the law?” one demanded.

The journalist, Pyotr Lipatov, would not budge, but he said he later realized what the investigators were seeking: for him to help them justify his severe beating at the hands of plainclothes police officers at the rally in this Moscow suburb.

The interrogation occurred more than a year after the beating in March 2009. The investigators tried to make Mr. Lipatov confess that he was responsible soon after The New York Times asked them why they had not charged the police officers.

Mr. Lipatov secretly taped the interrogation, which lasted more than six hours, and the recording represents a telling example of the way the authorities put intense pressure on journalists.