Soviet Presswatch/Saving Face

...A move to oust Igor Golembiovsky, a top editor of the democratic-leaning Izvestia, was warded off by staff resistance...

...a statement by the Soviet Journalists' Union proclaiming that "glasnost is in danger...

...They might have had a better turnout in Lafayette Park...

...Setting up "objectivity commissions," write Sokolov and Sukhanov, may prove far smarter: "One possible option is that 'objectivity commissions' will issue findings of bias, on the basis of which directors of print-shops (most of which are owned by the Communist Party) and the owners of premises will have the right to annul service contracts or lease agreements...

...In the provincial Russian town of Voronezh, "the party press justifies the military intervention, while the youth paper condemns it...

...and "Do You Hear the Stomping of Army Boots...

...and a survey of responses • to the Lithuanian crisis in various parts of the Soviet Union...

...One reporter phoned in from the Lithuanian mission in Moscow to say that its registry books had run out of space to record sympathetic phone calls...

...On January 13, Tatiana Mitkova, the most popular anchor on the brisk Television News Service, or TSN, refused to read the text prepared by Pyotr Reshetov, first deputy director of Gosteleradio (the state agency that supervises broadcasting), after Reshetov had killed nine out of ten pages of TSN's original broadcast scripts for that night's show...

...And how are ordinary Soviet peo- ple reacting...

...Last July at the Democracy and Independence conference in Prague (TAS, October 1990), I encountered a small group of producers and journalists from an independent Soviet TV show called "Authors' Television," or ATV, who complained they still could never be sure a controversial segment would not be followed by loss of access to state-run TV facilities...

...He did not push for suspension of the law but had the Supreme Soviet vote to recommend that the Committee on Glasnost work 30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1991 on "measures to ensure objectivity in the media...

...There was no word of any reprisals against Moscow Echo, an independent radio station that usually broadcasts from 7 p.m...

...Gosteleradio (which, in the hands of its new TAss-schooled chief Leonid Kravchenko, is turning—quips Kommersant—into "the President's channel") still holds a monopoly on the airwaves, and Russian TV, heralded as a source of alternative broadcasting, is being stifled in the bud...

...It denounced the Nevzorov film—which shows a special-forces platoon supposedly waiting for a Lithuanian sniper attack—as "a staged falsification quite obvious to the professional eye of a director, cameraman, or reporter," and appealed to viewers not to believe it: "They're lying to you, trying to set you against Lithuania and Lithuanians and thus whitewash the murderers and those behind them...

...In Ufa (Bashkiria), the republic's Democratic Youth Alliance stated, "We believe that tanks and weapons are not a proper method of resolving complex political issues," in an open letter in a youth newspaper called, of all things, Leninets`Leninist...

...The republican and local newspapers have not printed even brief news dispatches from Lithuania...

...Biro months later, at the Cato Institute's conference in Moscow, ATV reporter Alexander Chukhov invited me to be on their next show—a four-hour late-night program on central TV's Channel 2 consisting of documentary shorts followed by informal panel discussions...

...On the next day, TSN anchor Sergei Dorenko was briefly suspended "for an inappropriate, sarcastic tone' in reading this sentence: "Yeltsin's mission and his latest statements have been condemned by President Gorbachev, the servicemen of the Vilnius compound of the troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Russian-speaking deputies in Estonia...

...I declined Chukhov's offer for lack of time, telling myself that I could do the show on my next trip to Moscow...

...Since his past record suggests a certain streak of opportunism, one might wonder if he was very busy holding a finger to the wind...

...SOVIET PRESSWATCH SAVING FACE by Cathy Young I Buln Nikolai Gogol's classic tale Tams I ba, the fierce Cossack hero exclaims, as he shoots his son who has defected to the enemy: "I have given thee life and I shall kill thee...

...ommersant asked several prominent editors to comment on the proposed restrictions...

...S till, it must be said that Soviet broadcast journalists have put up enough resistance to save face, if not to save their freedom...

...According to a February 5 report from the new independent news service Novosti, some members of the Union of Journalists have moved to expel Kravchenko for infringing on freedom of the press...

...The day before, reports Moscow News (January 27), an "alternative" rally sponsored by groups with names like "Unity for Leninism and Communist Ideals" and "Women for the Socialist Future of Our Children" gathered 300 people in defense of Nevzorov and Saddam Hussein...

...Now, all suspicions have been dispelled...

...Bye-bye, Shurik" (a Russian nickname for Alexander), read a sign at the massive January 20 freedom rally in Moscow...

...have reported recently, has been taken off the two most widely heard frequencies...

...to 11 p.m...

...The union's Moscow section is expected to vote on the motion soon...

...I saw one of these programs during my stay...

...Let us hope that the weather service is, as always, wrong," deadpanned the "Vremya" anchor, proving that government lapdogs can be trained to have a sense of humor...

...In Pravda, Rabochaya lHbuna (Workers' Tribune), the military Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star), and their ideological clones, there were plots by "nationalist extremists seeking to restore a bourgeois order," heroic soldiers displaying their weaponry, and letters from "common workers" in the Baltics pleading with the troops to "act firmly and decisiveVilnius TV station...

...May our valiant commando troops score new triumphs in battles against civilians...

...There were reports from a stringer in Vilnius and in-studio commentary by Soviet radicals, including world chess champion Garry Kasparov...

...O n the downside, investigative journalist and cult figure Alexander Nevzorov showed his true colors in the short documentary film, "Our Boys," broadcast twice on January 16, whereinhe declared that the "boys" in question had saved Lithuania from eternal disgrace and that all the victims of the television tower raid had died of heart attacks or in traffic accidents...

...Yet nothing captures the national mood as perfectly, as this gem of a letter, in the same issue of Komsomolskaya Pravda, from one E. Snegur in the town of Zainsk: "I'd like to go as a volunteer to the Persian Gulf, to join the Americans or Hussein—I don't care, as long as I get out of here...

...This question is too serious for me to make up my mind in one minute...

...to protest the killings in Vilnius and the renewal of censorship, leaving the evening "Vremya" program with no weather forecast...

...And this sarcastic letter from "Private Volovik": "My heartfelt congratulations to Marshall Yazov on an outstanding victory, the capture of the 31...

...On January 25, Komsomolskaya Pravda ran a selection from over a hundred telegrams it had received, overwhelmingly pro-Lithuanian...

...but was on the air at 10 a.m...

...Even the Komsomol Committee of the Kharkov Polytechnic Institute calls for "negotiations with the legitimate government of the republic," the prosecution of Lithuania's National Salvation Committee, and the resignation of Yazov, Kravchenko, Internal Affairs Minister Boris Pugo, and KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov...

...For now, the clods from the RCP congress have had the last laugh...

...The hands of the censors have not yet reached the print media, theoretically protected by the 1990 Law on the Press—though on January 16, Gorbachev suggested that it might be .a good idea to suspend the law in order to "guarantee objectivity...

...on January 13, covering the events in Lithuania in a thirteen-hour marathon...

...The text, giving the official version of the Vilnius events, had to be read by someone else...

...it was rambling but lively, with a segment about a young man who had bought a horse (in the USSR, that can get you on TV) and another that poked fun at delegates to the Russian Communist party congress denouncing the liberal media...

...left-wing" newspapers...

...On the other hand, deputy editor of Pravda Anatoly Karpychev, said, "I'm not ready for your question—your call was very unexpected...

...I do not need the land of others...

...A letter signed by twenty-three members of the Soviet Cinematographers' Union (including Elem Klimov, who rose to the top of that organization as a loyal Gorbachevite) appeared in Rossiyskaya Gazeta (The Russian Gazette) on January 18 and in Nezavisimaya Gazeta (The Independent Gazette) on January 19...

...While Nevzorov had won many hearts by trumpeting, his anti-Communism, some people had suspected him all along of working for certain dark forces by whipping up hysteria about crime which could be used as a pretext for a crackdown...

...Literary Gazette's editor-in-chief Fyodor Burlatsky replied, via his secretary, that "he was going to be very busy in the next few days and could not say anything...

...the staff held a rally and passed a resolution condemning the use of force in the Baltics...

...Therefore, important national news events are bypassing this region: Central TV's Channel 4, the only one received here, is made up of entertainment programs...

...The pro-Yeltsin Radio Russia, as newspapers in the U.S...

...At a January 17 meeting, the program's staff decided to accept Gosteleradio's terms, reserving the right to inform viewers that the program was being subjected to political censorship and "to seek free airwaves" (Kommersant, January 21...

...Alluding to this famous phrase, a headline over a story on Gorbachev's relations with the press in the January 21 issue of the Moscow weekly Kommersant reads, "The President and Glasnost: I Have Given Thee Life . . ." In the reports of the first casualties of the Soviet crackdown on the media, there was one that caused me personal sadness...

...Most voiced anger, sarcasm, or apprehension (Vladimir Sungorkin, deputy chief editor of Komsomolskaya Pravda: "There is some anxiety on our staff, and some gallows humor . . 'What are we going to do when a National Salvation Committee shows up here...

...According to Moscow News (January 20), a number of people called the station asking if the staff needed food, coffee, or smokes...

...In the liberal and radical press, weeping Lithuanian mothers were looking for their dead children in morgues, headlines shouted "Attempted Military Coup in Lithuania," "They Were Shooting at You...

...and photographs showed the dead and wounded of Vilnius...

...The happiest of Soviet cities is Ashkhabad, the capital of Turkmenistan: "The central newspapers, Izvestia and Trud, have not come out here in two weeks for lack of paper...

...In the city of Karaganda in northern Kazakhstan, "the official circles are completely silent, while workplace discussions take place only in smoking rooms...

...In January, ATV was shut down...

...Hands off neighboring nations," writes Vyacheslav Chirkin, "a Russian worker...

...Literary Gazette has been unequivocally pro-Lithuanian in the aftermath of the "Bloody Sunday" in Vilnius...

...a report on a press conference by Boris Yeltsin, who said that ignoring the shift toward the sovereignty of republics was "a major strategic error of the American administration...

...The January 16 issue of the weekly devoted three pages to the Vilnius tragedy...

...The fateful events of January 13 have made clear the sharp dividing line between "right-wing" and THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1991 The January 15 issue of Izvestia carried an appeal for forgiveness and nonviolence from Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Alexis...

...So far, according to Burlatsky, newspapers and magazines that have become independent, such as Literary Gazette, Ogonyok, or Moscow News, have not been subjected to arm-twisting or to cutoffs of newsprint or paper...

...I guess getting run over by a tank qualifies as a traffic accident...

...In the "I Have Given Thee Life . . " article, Kommersant analysts Maksim Sokolov and Alexander Sukhanov regard Gorby's tactic as a clever one: had the Law on the Press been explicitly suspended, republican parliaments might have stepped in, drawing the central government into a new "war of laws...

...He added, however, that newspapers still owned by the party or the government are under pressure to adopt a more hardline stance...

...On January 16, the staff of central television's weather forecasting service went on a brief strike Cathy Young is the author of Growing Up in Moscow (Ticknor & Fields...

...Yet during a visit in the United States in February, Burlatsky expressed alarm over the encroachments on press freedoms, especially in broadcasting...

...Those who seek may not always find...