Soviet Presswatch/New World Disorder
Young, Cathy
SOVIET PRESSWATCH NEW WORLD DISORDER T he giddiness set off by the Great August Capitalist Revolution—expressed on the August 27 cover of the weekly Novoye Vremya ("New Time") with the picture of...
...The impeccably anti-Communist AlekCathy Young is the author of Growing Up in Moscow (Ticknor & Fields...
...As further evidence of the goodwill among all involved, Korotich visited the magazine's offices and was asked to remain a member of its editorial board...
...I could go on editing it for many more years...
...W hile Tretyakov accuses the estab- lishment media of being too cozy with Gorbachev, his own newspaper has come under fire for being too tough on Yeltsin, after publishing some fairly harsh articles that criticized Yeltsin's high-handedness and his apparent stand on republic borders...
...It was only on the morning of August 21, however, that he dictated to Poroikov a statement condemning the coup...
...According to Kommersant (Sept...
...by some accounts, Yeltsin personally intervened...
...On September 16, Popov chose his ally from the Democratic Russia bloc, Arkady Murashov, for the post of Moscow police chief over General Vyacheslav Komissarov, appointed earlier in the year by the Russian Ministry of the Interior and confirmed by the Moscow City Council (although that appointment had been blocked by late Soviet Interior Minister Boris Pugo...
...Former Vremya anchor Vladimir Molchanov told Kommersant that viewers were more sympathetic to TSN but that Vremya was more professional...
...All the newspapers represented, Tretyakov notes, were—at least originally—official Soviet organs...
...moreover, it is somehow just too amicable...
...But he never called, and on August 23 was notified of the scheduled editorial meeting...
...On returning to Moscow, Korotich told the media that when he spoke to Gush-chin from New York, Gushchin advised him not to return...
...Has he learned nothing from the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict...
...The display windows that used to feature official, insincerely malevolent cartoons of Uncle Sam [and] Zionist murderers now have a cartoon of the Communist Party . . . . It has the same strained malice, the same rubber-stamp wit...
...The parting with the editor-in-chief at another major glasnost-era weekly was far less cordial...
...Instead of such threats we now have some variation on "cancel my subscription," which is clearly a sign of growing civility...
...Having learned that the newspaper was banned, he told managing editor Yuri Poroikov that the staff should refuse all collaboration with the new regime and join Moscow News, the Independent Gazette, and others in publishing "The Common Newspaper" or produce an underground newspaper of their own—instructions that were ignored...
...One of the trailblazers of glasnost, Vitaly Korotich of the weekly Ogonyok, found himself out of a job...
...We are asking you to call your local library today and request that a subscription to TAS be obtained...
...Gushchin himself had flown back to Moscow from London on August 19, and the current managing editor, V. Yumashev, hastily returned from Dublin...
...Yeltsin's decision means war, the most terrible of wars—war stemming from ethnic hostilities...
...Or from the events in Yugoslavia...
...Yeltsin Puts Popov in Charge of the Law of Supply and Demand" was the Kommersant headline...
...P.S.: If it hadn't been for Yeltsin, you would have been out of work at best, and dead at worst...
...This is a situation we at TAS are constantly trying to remedy, and now you can help...
...Unlike Korotich, Burlatsky had not been out of the country...
...Petersburg's Chas Pik seated at a more reverent distance...
...Korotich went on to say that he wanted to concentrate on writing and teaching but would always cherish his relationship with Ogonyok...
...managing editor Lev Gush-chin took over as editor-in-chief...
...To top it off, Yeltsin issued a decree giving Popov special powers to fix prices in Moscow...
...In his lengthy article, entitled "Chronicle of a Mini-Coup," Burlatsky insisted that on August 19, he called the office of the Literary Gazette early in the morning...
...On the other hand, a mere three or four years ago, responses to offensive articles often contained a postscript stating that a copy of the letter was going to the KGB...
...The city council got very upset...
...A frontpage explanation followed—an editorial in which Tretyakov explained that the Independent Gazette was not "antiYeltsin" but pro-democracy and anti-unanimity...
...At the Literary Gazette, Fyodor Burlatsky, a veteran Gorbachev man, was dismissed by the editorial staff (which now owns the paper) for being insufficiently outspoken in opposing the coup...
...on September 18, Vremya staffers met with Yakovlev to stand up for their chief and knock the idea of the contest...
...An avalanche of letters followed...
...Burlatsky cites testimony from people who witnessed his behavior in the Crimea and whose letters the mutinous Literary Gazette would not publish...
...LIBRARY WATCH There are many intelligent, intellectually starved unfortunates in this country who do not have easy access to The American Spectator...
...sandr Kabakov writes in Moscow News (September 22): We've got the freedom we waited for...
...Kommersant quipped that, since Murashov is a thermal physicist, it might have been wiser to make him fire chief...
...Be that as it may, Komissarov took over on September 20, leaving Murashov (who is no stranger to Washington, where he has worked the conservative circuit) a by Cathy Young butt of jokes...
...Later that night, he was shocked to see that Kakuchaya's Sunday night program contained a segment, taped before the phone call, that was sharply critical of the very idea of the news-team contest...
...In a commentary entitled "Now It's Really Scary" (September 3), Vladimir Kovalenko, a recent defender of the Russian White House, wrote: Does Boris Yeltsin understand what he is doing...
...Tretyakov hastens to admit (which might shock American liberals) that people have the right to form any club they please and to admit or not to admit anyone...
...Some not only ask questions but give answers, further complicating things with speculation...
...My family was going to subscribe, expensive though it is, but now we won't even buy it at the newsstand...
...not one Russian Republic paper was there, and not one of the papers independently founded over the last two years...
...Box 549, Arlington, Virginia 22216-0549 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1991 35...
...He reveals the exciting fact that at the meeting where the decision to dismiss him was made, an editor voting against the resolution flung her shoe at Poroikov, who led the anti-Burlatsky forces...
...I was even going to subscribe . . . [Kovalenko's] article insults Russia and the President of Russia...
...For over five years, I edited a magazine that evolved from an ordinary little party weekly into one of the country's top periodicals...
...Many librarians are open to suggestions made by their patrons, and will be more than willing to acquiesce to your wishes, especially after you graciously explain that TAS is one of the liveliest and best-written opinion journals in print today...
...The contest was shelved...
...On the next day, Yakovlev, "as if nothing had happened," asked Kakuchaya to stay on the job...
...M eanwhile, the new head of Cen- tral TV, Yegor Yakovlev (formerly of Moscow News) came up with the idea of a two-week competition, from September 2 to September 15, between the old Vremya team (now the Information Programs Studio) and the staffers of Russian TV and Television News Service (TSN) to see who could produce the better evening news show...
...He cited the new "Club of Editors-in-Chief," whose first meeting was held September 17 at the offices of Izvestia: Gorbachev was the guest, flanked by Yakovlev, Izvestia's Igor Golembiovsky, and Vitaly Ignatenko of TASS, with current Moscow News chief editor Len Karpinsky, Trud's A. Potapov, Komsomolskaya Pravda's V. Fronin, and Natalya Fomina of St...
...The winner, to be determined by audience surveys, was to get the permanent Vremya slot on October 1. By September 15, however, Yakovlev thought the old Vremya was the clear winner and called up studio head Olvar Kakuchaya to congratulate him...
...Wrote another reader, "Please explain (preferably on the front page) why your newspaper hates Russia so much...
...The strange games of the victorious democrats continued in the following weeks...
...He points out, though, that it's a little different when the club is not just a private group like any other but has its meetings broadcast on state TV and is the only forum where the Soviet president meets with journalists: "The 'Clubof Editors-in-Chief' becomes a 'Club of the New Nomenidatura of the Fourth Estate.' This nomenklatura knows exactly what questions to ask the President...
...Burlatsky further says that he tried to fly back to Moscow but was unable to get plane tickets for an earlier date than August 22 (that being the Soviet Union, it sounds plausible), and that he repeatedly called the office—which he says he has the phone bills to prove—to urge resistance...
...he was, of all things, on vacation in the Crimea...
...Already on September 2, Kommersant observed: "Strange but true: now that such national clowns as the incarcerated [former Prime Minister] Valentin Pavlov are no longer watching over the public weal, the vacant spots of popular entertainers are being quickly filled by the new heroes of our days...
...I would hate to repeat the mistakes of [those] in our government who cling to their seats like moths to a fur coat...
...This reaction may be seen by some as evidence that the Russians aren't ready for pluralism after all...
...To quell all the talk about his "firing," he gave his version in a column which appeared in the magazine's September 7 issue: 34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1991 Today, many people ask why I left the post of editor-in-chief of Ogonyok...
...2), Korotich called Gushchin on the 19th, asked how things were going, and promised to call again in a few days...
...The teams for the next two nights' broadcasts were hastily put together and even included radio people...
...And where, he asks, was Sergei Korzun of Moscow Echo, "the only free radio station in Moscow during the coup...
...The editors were referring to Boris Yeltsin's imperial gestures (the incautious warning about Ukrainian borders and the announced restoration of Czarist Russia's two-headed eagle, which, said Kommersant, "had the repulsive look of Chernobyl broiler chicken"), and the antics of Moscow mayor Gavril Popov, who showed great gusto in attacking political enemies and made televised threats that a secessionist Ukraine should kiss the Crimea and the Black Sea coast good-bye...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR® 2020 N. 14th Street, P.O...
...the strongest word used was "coward...
...But I could not help seeing that an entire pleiad of new Ogonyok people was emerging and it was time for them to take the lead...
...However, instead of Korotich came his resignation by telephone, which was accepted three days later...
...At the meeting, [Korotich] was hardly badmouthed at all...
...T he newly unshackled media, too, were in a state of chaos...
...Initial reports said that Korotich resigned after being attacked at an editorial meeting for remaining in New York (where he was on a fellowship) during the coup...
...And in a September 23 editorial, the Independent Gazette's Vitaly Tretyakov voiced his alarm at the state of the Fourth Estate...
...SOVIET PRESSWATCH NEW WORLD DISORDER T he giddiness set off by the Great August Capitalist Revolution—expressed on the August 27 cover of the weekly Novoye Vremya ("New Time") with the picture of a bare-torsoed young man straddling the Dzerzhinsky statue and the caption, "For 73 years, it was them on our backs"—has run its course...
...I assure you I'll never buy a single copy of your paper again...
...One I. Solovyova, a scientist, wrote: For over a year, I have tried to buy your newspaper...
...Even the public no longer gets a kick out of this freedom...
...According to Kommersant, Yakovlev saw this as "betrayal and use of airwaves for private purposes," and told the apparent winner to look for a new job...
...Since the overthrown editor was denied a chance to state his side in the newspaper he headed for a year and a half, the chivalrous Independent Gazette provided him with a forum (September 19...
...The rebels at the Literary Gazette charged, in the columns of their newspaper and in media interviews, that Burlatsky had ignored their telephone pleas to return to Moscow...
Vol. 24 • December 1991 • No. 12
