Newspapers: Revisions in Russia

Last week the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda (Truth for Youth) lowered the boom on a famed sea captain, Aleksei Solyanik. Though he had been celebrated as a hero for his whaling exploits and was awarded the Order of Lenin, the captain was now accused of “rude suppression of criticism, inadmissible nepotism, and abuse of his high post. He killed the sentiments of justice, honor and dignity among his own men.”

Lately, such attacks on tyrannical officials have become commonplace in the Russian press. Thousands of letters of complaint pour in daily to the editorial offices of Pravda, Izvestia and other papers. If a letter is published—and many are—the writer is assured some kind of redress: an official mentioned in a newspaper complaint is required to answer it. Sometimes the private gripes blossom into a full-fledged editorial discussion of substantive issues: economics, or crime, or agriculture, or juvenile delinquency. It all adds up to impressive evidence that some of the shackles have been removed from the Soviet press.

Flexible Tools. Most of the shackles, of course, remain in place. Party dogma is still sacrosanct; when newspaper discussion comes too close to sensitive issues, the party simply chokes it off. While most Western broadcasts are no longer jammed (the jamming equipment has been moved eastward to blank out Radio Peking), non-Communist Western newspapers are still banned in Russia. When the magazine Kommunist recently urged the Russian press to increase its news coverage, its aim was not so much to free the press as to meet the competition. “We have to admit that bourgeois news agencies have achieved a high degree of speed in reacting immediately to all that happens around the world, while we are sometimes late,” said Kommunist. “It means that a false version is spread around the world more rapidly than the true and correct one.”

The Communists have always regarded their press as a prop of the regime. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Beria, Molotov all served time on Russian newspapers and used them to consolidate their power. “No tool so flexible,” said Stalin, referring to the press, “is to be found in nature.” Today, some 7,000 of these tools—ranging from the big Moscow dailies, Pravda and Izvestia, to crude factory handouts—are published in 121 languages in Russia.

After Stalin’s death, Khrushchev relieved the papers’ grey monotony by allowing more lively coverage and makeup. As editor of Izvestia, Khrushchev’s son-in-law, Aleksei Adzhubei, introduced a degree of cautious criticism; he also went in for some mild sensationalism, such as reporting the activities of the Abominable Snowman.

Adzhubei lost his job along with Khrushchev, but the trend to more flexibility in the press was not reversed. Today’s Russian bosses, Brezhnev and Kosygin, play down the cult of personality (though they do not provide as lively copy as did Khrushchev). While Stalin’s name used to appear in boldface and was given prominent display in most news stories, the present leaders are apparently content to have their names occasionally omitted from copy—which does not mean they are about to be demoted or disappear. Since news coverage is no longer a sure tip-off to a Soviet official’s status, Kremlinologists have a tougher job than ever deciding who ranks where in the Russian hierarchy.

Behind the Masses. In Stalin’s time, any party hack might wind up working for a newspaper. Today, journalism departments at 18 universities turn out 950 graduates a year. Tass, the official news agency, exchanges news in New York with A.P. and U.P.I., and from time to time Russian newsmen drop in to observe U.S. wire-service operations. All told, there are some 160 Russian correspondents overseas; in many of the underdeveloped nations of Africa and Asia, they outnumber their Western counterparts, and they often scoop the West on stories in these areas. “There are plenty of capable newsmen waiting for someone to open the door,” says a Columbia University Kremlinologist who monitors the Soviet press.

How far the door will open remains to be seen. But the push, at least initially, is unlikely to come from the press. “In the West,” says Albert Boiter of Radio Liberty, “the press is the pacesetter. But the Soviet press stands not in front but behind the masses, following popular trends and undercurrents gingerly and grudgingly. Whatever liberal innovations have been introduced lately are not the work of audacious editors, keen reporters and erudite commentators. They have been made because of the demands of the readership, which is slowly and rather unwillingly being followed by the press.”