Russian Presswatch/Up for Grabs

...Navrozov did some excellent work—his 1980 Commentary piece, "What Does the CIA Know About Russia...

...gives him every right to say "I told you so"—but more often, alas, his arguments seemed rather eccentric...

...For him, a teatime chat in the late 1960s with the wife of a high-ranking Soviet official whose dacha was next to his became incontrovertible evidence that the Soviets had been on the verge of seizing Mexico...

...In the mid-eighties he took his one-man crusade against the New, York Times to the City Tribune, calling his column "With David's Slingshot Against the N.Y...

...El 52 The American Spectator October 1992...

...Crowds of inebriated young toughs in two Siberian cities rioted against fruit and wine traders from the Caucasus, destroying their wares, ransacking their hotel rooms, and setting fire to their cars...

...He also undertook the mission of saving the West, lulled by Soviet propaganda and by its own gullible leaders and complicit press, from the ever-more-imminent threat of Soviet domination—a danger he explained in his twice-weekly column in the Unification Church–owned News World (later reincarnated as the New York City Tribune...

...Digging for Dollars Soviet Communism may be dead, even to its most tenacious enemies...

...It's mind-boggling how clever these Communists are, because it seems they've finally seduced the one man who was on to them...

...At this point, the Russian reader's eyes grow big: a single woman living in two rooms...

...The Margies of the world do all the work, and the managers sit in their corner offices and reap unearned rewards: "When a company fails thanks to his leadership, [the manager] moves on to another company, usually with even better pay and benefits...

...And the Russian media were understandably shaken by the attempt of parliament—elected in 1990 and still thick with Communists and assorted authoritarians—to reclaim Izvestia, which had declared independence of the Congress of People's Deputies after the August '91 coup...

...However...

...It should be noted that Belotserkovsky is a quasi-socialist who deplores the Russian intellectuals' inclination to "worship a new The American Spectator October 1992 51 fashionable brand of extremism, this time capitalist ideology...

...A Phone Call From Prison" (June 18) introduces the Russian public to the case of his friend Alexei T., a former Soviet dissident now serving an 8 113-to25-year sentence in a New York state prison for the fatal shooting of a fellow émigr...

...he will, however, be deeply impressed to learn that "Alyosha" can call his friend Lev collect from a pay phone inside the prison...

...But maybe we're underestimating the cunning of our slingshot-wielding David...

...He concluded that subsidies will have to continue for the time being, but should be allocated on the basis of circulation...

...Mikhail A., a grave-digger with twenty-two years' experience, put it with brutal candor: "For dollars, I can put this vozhd not just six feet under but thirty feet under if they want me to...

...Maybe he's only pretending to fall for the Communists' tricks, so that they'll think no one in the West knows what they're up to and get careless—just in time for Navrozov to save the West after all...

...The past two years haven't been kind: the demise of Soviet Communism and of the New York City Tribune left Navrozov with no enemy and no forum—though he continued to argue, in such outlets as the Russian émigr?magazine Vremya i My and the Jewish monthly Midstream, that the Soviet empire had merely faked its own death and the West had fallen for the trick...

...Readers at least have the choice of different newspapers, but all news broadcasting is government-owned: "No one is even thinking of switching to subscriber-based TV and radio, to give individuals the opportunity to choose what they like...

...True, he was trying to make it in business, but only so he could give Navrozov money for a newspaper to spread his message...

...in Moscow News (July 26), Kommersant's new editor-in-chief, Ksenia Ponomareva, expressed dismay at the petty and tyrannical actions of the parliament—going after a newspaper that had criticized it—but also pointed out that the press itself gave ammunition to its persecutors by appealing for state funding...

...Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak and some others are pushing for a plan to bury Lenin in the Volkov cemetery in St...

...moderately critical ones are 'balanced,' just like in the good old days, by positive responses or editors' notes...

...For the benefit of those unfamiliar with this singular personage, Navrozov, now 64, moved to the U.S...

...Times...

...Petersburg, next to his mother Maria Ulyanova and other family members, as the vozhd (leader) himself apparently desired...

...The administration of the Volkov cemetery is not overeager to receive the controversial remains, fearing "grave desecrations by extremists...

...The Reeducation of Lev Navrozov To the impressive list of émigr?writers making regular appearances in the Russian press, we can now make a startling addition: Lev Navrozov...

...In the Independent Gazette (June 11), correspondent Denis Gurinsky follows the latest debates surrounding the bothersome mummy...

...At the parliament session, Russian minister of the press and information Mikhail Poltoranin implored the restive MPs "not to disgrace themselves" by such a vote...

...There is undoubtedly some truth to this, though Navrozov in his usual forgetfulness fails to add that most jobs in America are notwith large corporations or that rank-andfile employees can move up into management...

...Though now formally owned by its staff, Izvestia continues to use government-owned premises and equipment and, like most other newspapers, to rely on government subsidies...

...You can't impress a Russian with news that someone may have been unfairly jailed...

...In the June 24 Literary Gazette, émigré journalist Vadim Belotserkovsky argued that "really hard-hitting articles have all but disappeared...

...in the West, Alyosha conceived a hatred for commercialism...

...Or has he despaired of making himself heard in commercialized America and decided to collaborate with the Communists in maintaining the illusion that Russia now has a free press...

...For who should appear inthe pages of Izvestia but Lev Navrozov, billed as "American political commentator...

...Kommersant remains the only major Russian newspaper financially independent of the government...

...The newspapers' deferential attitudes toward the government can also be seen in the treatment of my own articles which I tried to get published in Moscow...

...Having been away from his native country for twenty years, Navrozov may have forgotten how the Soviet or ex-Soviet reader reacts to negative stories about the West...

...but its founder, for the time being, remains eternally alive in his Red Square mausoleum...

...Petersburg's soil with the remains of a monster...

...and from Communists, who regard the proposed burial as "an insult to the great man...

...Amazingly, the debate, once again, is over what is to be imposed on the audience: the politicians' buffoonery or the journalists' self-importance...

...Yet, last May, the noted Moscow free-market economist Boris Pinsker told me that some of his articles criticizing the economic reform strategy of Yeltsin's finance minister Yegor Gaidar, scheduled for publication by major periodicals, were killed at the last minute...

...What is truly sad, Bystritsky noted, is that both the oafish deputies and the posturing journalists have utter disregard for the interests of the average news consumer...

...On the other hand, Gurinsky found the grave-diggers at the Volkov cemetery to be nothing if not enthusiastic: the men said they were ready to dig Lenin a grave in three hours, in spite of threats from Leninists to "string them up...

...To complicate things further, Sobchak wants a public funeral with a Russian Orthodox ceremony, which the great man would indeed have taken as an insult...

...Speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov, one of the men behind the motion, retorted: "It's up to the deputies to decide whether they want to disgrace themselves or not...

...First impressions notwithstanding, this was not a simple black-and-white case of heroic journalists versus villainous apparatchiks...

...In a guest column Cathy Young, our regular Russian Presswatch columnist, is the author of Growing Up in Moscow (Ticknor & Fields...

...This plan, however, is meeting with opposition from the local radical democrats, who protest "the contamination of St...

...The case had many elements that suggest self-defense, and Navrozov says (perhaps plausibly, though he omits a number of relevant details) that "if Alyosha had been a billionaire, he would have hired one of the country's best lawyers \for a million or two and would have been acquitted...

...But leaving that aside, one has to wonder: Has Navrozov finally been convinced that the Soviet empire is defunct...

...Meanwhile, sociologist Andrei Bystritsky pointed out on the same page that the bid to take over Izvestia is less an attack on free speech than an attempt to snatch a piece of the media and thereby of political power—"a desire not so much to limit the power of the press as to use it...

...These debates are taking place amid mounting complaints that the Russian press, unable to wean itself from state subsidies, is becoming more docile andless willing to give a forum to critics of the Yeltsin government...

...in 1972 and published a well-received autobiographical look at Soviet society, The Education of Lev Navrozov (Harper & Row, 1975...

...A plane en route from Yerevan to Moscow saw its forty-minute stop in Sochi (Georgia) turn into a six-hour ordeal for 350 passengers left frying in the cabin while the 300,000 rubles the pilot had been given to pay for fuel—in three- and five-ruble notes—were being counted...

...While Navrozov tells his readers that $2,000 a month is the average salary in America, he neglects to mention that taxes and rents in New York are far above the American average...

...Ponomareva was favorably quoted in, the Literary Gazette (July 22) by antiYeltsin MP Nikolai Pavlov, whose own politics are probably not of the free-market variety—though he does say the government shouldn't run newspapers...

...His point is that late twentieth-century capitalism has been bureaucratized by the transfer of power from owners to managers, whom he christens an American nomenklatura...

...Inside a New York Skyscraper" (July 16) profiles another victim of America: Navrozov's neighbor Margie, a rank-andfile corporate employee making $2,000 a month, of which $700 goes to taxes and various deductions and another $700 to pay for a "so-so" one-bedroom Manhattan apartment...