Soviet Presswatch/Growing Pains
Young, Cathy
SOVIET PRESSWATCH GROWING PAINS by Cathy Young Less than a year after the Soviet Union received its own (far more verbose and far less clear-cut) version of the First Amendment, the Law on the...
...The Russian Republic has its own ministry of communications, which has plans to organize its own subscription service—sometime in the future...
...Senator's daughter would make very good material...
...Sample: "Gorbachev left home for work one day and slipped and fell on the ice...
...with the unintentionally comical translation The Silence of the Sheep, but even Kommersant isn't perfect...
...Because Demokraticheskaya Rossiya stays scrupulously within the bounds of the Law on the Press (which forbids only the disclosure of "military secrets"), Dubnov does not think the paper could be shut down legally, but the same effect could be achieved by extra-legal means, by cutting off access to paper or printing facilities...
...They range from the dignified publications of newborn parties, such as the Russian Republican party's Gospodin Narod ("The Sovereign People"), to the frankly sensationalist and avidly read tabloid Sovershenno Sekretno ("Top Secret"), whose publisher, Soviet mystery writer Yulian Semyonov, has long been rumored to have KGB connections...
...So did the U.S...
...Meanwhile, Russia's first gay and lesbian magazine, Tema ("Theme"), has won a libel suit against the neighborhood paper Karetny Dyad, which had alleged that Tema's editor-in-chief Roman Kalinin (see TAS, December 1990) had spoken in lyrical terms of the joys of pedophilia...
...Rutskoi later repudiated this comment "and said that he respected Sakharov 'as the scientist who created the atom bomb.'" He lost the race...
...2) to carry out the sentence PUBLICLY...
...In the spring of 1989, Rutskoi became one of the principal founders of Otechestvo (Fatherland), a major anti-Semitic group in Moscow...
...The circulation of independent newspapers has yet to match that of official ones, which is often in the millions...
...It also features witty video tips, mostly for pirated versions of brand-new Western films such as The Silence of the Lambs ("A deranged tailor requires women with soft skin for his technical needs, and finds out that a U.S...
...DR, which made its first appearance as a monthly in June 1990, then faltered and was reborn as a weekly in March, is published by a holding company of the same name, with world chess champion and Wall Street Journal contributing editor Gary Kasparov as president...
...and spent some time as a POW...
...And what did the free press do...
...The offer was to be discussed at a board meeting of the parent company but ran into staunch opposition from Gary Kasparov...
...Pravda and TASS used the story as an occasion to take a shot at the radical Moscow City Council, which had allowed Tema to register legally...
...Popov, the radical mayor of Moscow (whose often conciliatory attitude toward Gorbachev is surely one of the targets of this satire), on lack of funds...
...30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1991...
...Yeah, and Duke thought the Ku Klux Klan was just a college fraternity with a funny name...
...T s the newspaper completely uncensored...
...At a May 21 press conference, Rutskoi asserted that he had joined Otechestvo assuming it was merely a group for the protection of Russian culture and disassociated himself from it as soon as he realized the organization was taking on anti-Semitic leanings...
...Demokraticheskaya Rossiya has not been prosecuted for offending the honor and dignity of the president, so perhaps he's decided to lighten up...
...Maybe they're just kidding...
...In the spring of 1990, he ran in a small-town district for a seat in the Russian parliament (with the support of the regional committee of the Communist party) and won...
...However, a trustworthy Moscow source assures me that Kalinin privately admitted he had not been misquoted—but went ahead with the lawsuit anyway, since he knew that his comments had not been tape-recorded...
...Production is a problem as well...
...I'm not saying it's time to give up on Yeltsin...
...At present, Kommersant, which has been around since January 1990 and is backed by the wealthy Association of United Cooperatives, is the only independent newspaper with its own subscribers...
...it is a remarkable document...
...If it leaves us alone, that's good enough...
...Gorby decides to solve the problem by ordering armored personnel vehicles to cruise the streets of the city—with the sole purpose of breaking up the ice, of course...
...SOVIET PRESSWATCH GROWING PAINS by Cathy Young Less than a year after the Soviet Union received its own (far more verbose and far less clear-cut) version of the First Amendment, the Law on the Press, independent newspapers have become a visible and unruly presence on the scene...
...I get notes that brand us Zionists, Jews, kikes, whores, and various unprintable things," said Dubnov, who is Jewish...
...The key word is uncertainty, a state by no means unique to free newspapers in today's Soviet Union...
...With a circulation of about 170,000,Demokraticheskaya Rossiya remains, after more than a dozen issues, a losing enterprise...
...5) This sentence is final and irreversible, with no right of appeal...
...W hat's it like...
...But if the free press had done its job, Yeltsin would have dropped Rutskoi faster than you could say David Duke...
...But a radical newspaper has special concerns: Dubnov recalled the first gathering of the paper's editorial staff in February...
...Similarly, Nezavisimaya Gazeta is printed at the Izvestia printshop...
...What is it like to work for it...
...Asked what could appear in Demokruticheskaya Rossiya that could not appear, say, in the semi-official Literaturnaya Gazeta—from which most of DR's current staff had defected—Dubnov begged to rephrase the question...
...The prospect was a tempting one: at the time,the Literaturnaya Gazeta printshop was threatening to stop printing the paper, and the ministry was offering help with money and printing facilities, promising, at the same time, to refrain from any interference with editorial decisions...
...And yet, as far as I have been able to find out, most of the Russian free press gave Yeltsin pretty much of a free ride on one rather disturbing score...
...upon returning home, he was awarded a Hero of the Soviet Union medal...
...The issue is Yeltsin's choice of a running mate, Alexander V. Rutskoi, who headed a "Communists for Democracy" faction (coming next: "Cannibals for Vegetarianism" and "Rapists for Women's Rights") during the split in the Commie bloc at the March Congress of People's Deputies of the Russian Federation...
...While government-owned, it is also quite capitalist-minded, giving preference—such as better quality offset printing—to customers who can afford to pay in hard currency...
...Such zeal may seem a bit excessive, but Dubnov pointed out that provincials are starved for alternative coverage and points of view: the usual fare on newsstands in their towns runs to Pravda and the even more orthodox Sovetskaya Rossiya, occasionally spiced up by the cautiously liberal Izvestia...
...Victor Alksnis...
...media, which can always plead special ignorance...
...Such letters are few but they are a source of ineffable delight...
...Rutskoi, a 44-year-old colonel in the Soviet armed forces, flew 428 combat missions in Afghanistan, was shot down twice while bombing guerrilla bases (villages...
...Currently, Demokraticheskaya Rossiya is working toward an agreement with several other major independent newspapers to pool their financial and other resources and organize their own independent network of distribution to newsstands across the Russian Republic...
...Nationalist groups of the Pamyat type have their newspapers, with a knack for raising cutting questions with not-sosubtle irony: Is the underrepresentation of Jews in unskilled factory jobs a result of anti-Semitic discrimination...
...The first thing we discussed—and it was natural, in the wake of January's events in the Baltics—was that if we started making the kind of newspaper we were talking about, we would be the first candidates for a visit from the Black Berets...
...Dubnov is convinced that the circulation could rise to more than 700,000...
...The editors eventually realized that Kasparov was probably right when, having criticized some of Yeltsin's tactics and statements shortly before the election, they got a message from the Russian parliament conveying a certain displeasure...
...According to a May 19 dispatch of the News and Information Agency in Moscow, Rutskoi "enjoyed active support from Pamyat, Otechestvo, the district committee of the Communist party and the official circles of the (Russian Orthodox) Church...
...And there is still no independent daily, though the popular Nezavisimaya Gazeta ("The Independent Gazette") comes out three times a week, on 'Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays...
...One columnist, Ninel Loginova, received a "death sentence' written in quasi-official language...
...Tema's victory in court must be something of a legal milestone for the straitlaced Soviets...
...The free Russian press is clearly gaining ground...
...4) to inform citizen Tretyakov of the sentence...
...All the professional journalists who had come to work for the paper, Dubnov said, did so at some cost—sacrificing not just higher incomes but all-important fringe benefits, such as the free use of cars and summer homes, trips abroad, and so forth...
...For now, both Demokraticheskaya RosTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1991 29 siya and Nezavisimaya Gazeta (which has a similar circulation but, according to Dubnov, reaches fewer readers outside Moscow) are available on newsstands only...
...This thought, perhaps, excited or stimulated us to a certain degree...
...0120...
...Burkov (an Otechestvo board member), was asked at a meeting with voters for his thoughts on Sakharov, Burkov said, "I'd like to see that Sakharov hang...
...Cathy Young is the author of Growing Up in Moscow (Ticknor & Fields...
...But on top of the paper and newsprint problems, distribution, too, remains in the hands of the state—the Soviet Ministry of Communications...
...its advisory board includes Vladimir Bukovsky, Elena Bonner, and the radical parliamentarian Yuri Afanasyev...
...Signed by "The Coordinating Council of the People's Committee for the Salvation of Soviet Socialist Russia" and dated April 3, 1991, it reads: Because Nezavisimaya Gazeta, and consequently its editor-in-chief citizen TRETYAKOV V., is inciting anti-Soviet, anti-socialist, anti-Communist psychosis . . . doing the work of Western and American-Israeli intelligence, and preaching the restoration of capitalism and Russophobia, the CC PC SSSR, by a majority of votes, has RESOLVED: 1) to sentence citizen Tretyakov V. to DEATH...
...Dubnov assured me that, curiously, publications of a Slavophile and even anti-Semitic bent seem to get more favorable treatment as well...
...Meanwhile, Dubnov said that they were getting "a tremendous number of calls and letters" from people complaining they couldn't find the paper...
...While DR is about to acquire its own typesetting equipment and to start doing the typesetting and layout on the premises rather than having it done by a small company for a sizable fee, it still has to resort to the services of a government-owned printshop—that of Literaturnaya Gazeta...
...When his top campaign aide, Lt...
...Pugo and Popov rushed to help him up...
...At the first Congress of People's Deputies of the Russian Federation, Rutskoi ran into a group of anti-Communist deputies in the lobby and remarked, "You'll come crawling to us yet, and bring the rope [to hang you with...
...Or Any Less...
...But hate mail can be more coherent, and more frightening...
...A recent issue's humor page offered acid, hilariously absurdist "Gorbachev anecdotes...
...In January 1991, however, Rutskoi showed signs of going over to the other side, coming to the defense of Yeltsin against the infamous Col...
...Somewhere in between is the irreverent Kommersant, which offers weekly updates on Western business executives' visits to the USSR, politically astute commentary, and zingy headlines, such as this one on a story about compensation to offset the effect of recent Soviet price increases: "We Won't Have Any More Poverty...
...Apparently so, always with the exception of "state secrets" (which apparently no longer include, as in the past, the inner sancta of Soviet sausage factories...
...In the same year, he left his post as vice chairman of Otechestvo but did not resign membership in the group...
...And that's only the beginning...
...In the first weeks of publication, a caller from Pyatigorsk griped that it was being sold in that town at 15 rubles a copy (quite a profit margin on the 50-kopeck cover price), and added that he would gladly pay 20 rubles if he could only have a copy all to himself...
...Anyone who opens a private business, Dubnov reminded me, has to worry about the prospect that such activities may be outlawed as contrary to the socialist spirit...
...Dubnov said that while he naturally hoped for the strengthening of the republican government (at the expense of the central government's powers), he had "no illusions about counting on help from the Russian government any time soon...
...The Batkin article chided Yeltsin for picking_ a Communist as his running mate but did not even mention the Otechestvo connection...
...subscriptions are out of the question for now, since the Ministry of Communications' terms are prohibitive...
...Under such pressures, safeguarding one's independence is a constant challenge...
...But the document is marked "Case No...
...3) to DELAY the execution of the sentence until the full restoration of Soviet socialist power in Russia...
...For an inside view, I spoke to Arkady Dubnov, managing editor of the weekly Demokraticheskaya Rossiya ("Democratic Russia"), in the United States for a brief visit in July...
...About six weeks after the newspaper's March debut, the Russian Republic's minister of media and communications, Mikhail Poltoranin—who was a respected journalist before he went into politics full-time—invited some of the editors for a chat, complimented them, and announced that the ministry would like to co-sponsor DR...
...A similar missive, sent to the editorin-chief of Nezavisimaya Gazeta Vitaly Iretyakov (with the envelope marked "Personal"), was published in that newspaper...
...Yeltsin's Creepy Veep In comparing independent newspapers such as his to the dependent ones such as Literaturnaya Gazeta, Dubnov said proudly that DR would never balk at antagonizing anyone in power or rising to power, and pointed out that despite their political sympathies, the editors felt it was not merely their right but their duty to criticize Yeltsin if he did something wrong: the pre-election issue (June 7) ran a front-page article by well-known political commentator Leonid Batkin, "For Yeltsin But With Eyes Wide Open...
...Around the same time, he ran for a seat in the USSR People's Congress...
...He cited an obsequious article on Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov which had appeared in Literaturnaya Gazeta right after the infamous monetary reform as the sort of article that could never run in DR...
...The rewards include letters from all over Russia—some grateful, others hardly so...
...Pugo, the hardline minister of internal affairs, blames the icy pavement on the "democrats...
Vol. 24 • September 1991 • No. 9
