TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/103089/10308900.034

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 6.5 KB | 126 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 62

SOVIET UNION

Dear Editor: You're Fired. Signed, Mikhail Gorbachev


Fed up with journalists on the right and the left who snipe at
his policies, the Kremlin leader calls for a rewrite


    Victor Afanasyev and Vladislav Starkov are both
journalists, but they're unlikely ever to share a byline. As
editor of the gray-tinged daily Pravda, Afanasyev, 66, has been
less than eager to rush into print any of the startling
revelations or investigative spadework that has become the
hallmark of glasnost. On the other hand, Starkov, 50, oversees
the weekly tabloid Argumenty i Fakty, whose sharp prose and
readers' letters more often than not dwell on the changes
sweeping the country, and helped make the paper the most widely
read in the Soviet Union. Yet last week both men faced pressures
far worse than those posed by deadlines: Afanasyev was summarily
fired from his job and Starkov's resignation was demanded by
high Kremlin officials.

    As the official voice of the Communist Party, Pravda could
hardly avoid addressing President Mikhail Gorbachev's ambitious
agenda. But the paper did so unevenly, sometimes approving
changes and at other times reflecting the views of the
Politburo's conservative members. As for investigative
journalism that turned up scandals from the past, Afanasyev
gradually grew tired of exhumed skeletons. "To dig around in the
dirty linen of our history," he told the daily Sovetskaya
Rossiya in September, "merely serves to lead people away from
the solution of our contemporary problems."

    Afanasyev suffered a nasty embarrassment last month, when
Pravda reprinted a lurid dispatch from an Italian newspaper
claiming that reformist Supreme Soviet Deputy Boris Yeltsin
boozed and shopped his way through a tour of the U.S. The paper
was later forced to publish an apology, even though tapes
subsequently broadcast over Soviet television appeared to show
Yeltsin at least mildly intoxicated. But Afanasyev's most
serious failure was one that has also undone many an editor in
the West: falling circulation. Over the past four years, as
Soviet news buffs switched to livelier journalistic fare,
Pravda's readership slipped from 10 million to 5 million.

    Afanasyev was dismissed under the guise of requesting a
"transfer to scientific work." Named as his replacement was
Ivan Frolov, 60, by no coincidence a close Gorbachev ally.
Frolov has held academic and journalistic posts, in 1986 and
1987 as editor of the ideological journal Kommunist. His
stewardship of that once stiffly orthodox publication was marked
by the introduction of new voices, including some that have been
prominent in the perestroika movement.

    Starkov's troubles began at a meeting two weeks ago between
Gorbachev and leading media representatives. The Soviet
President has held other such sessions, but this time he did all
the talking. During a two-hour finger-wagging lecture, Gorbachev
delivered a blistering attack on liberal elements of the press,
accusing them of undermining the influence of the Communist
Party. He was particularly thin-skinned about press coverage of
the so-called Interregional Group of Deputies, a liberal caucus
in the Supreme Soviet, whose members voice harsh criticism of
Gorbachev's leadership that makes its way into print. Said
Gorbachev: "We are standing knee deep in an ocean of gasoline,
and you throw in lighted matches."

    Gorbachev singled out an unscientific poll rating the
popularity of leading Supreme Soviet Deputies that had appeared
two weeks ago in Argumenty i Fakty. The four top scorers, based
on 15,000 pieces of reader mail, were physicist Andrei
Sakharov, economist Gavril Popov, Yeltsin and historian Yuri
Afanasyev (no kin to Victor) -- every one a member of the
Interregional Group A&F, which was founded by Starkov in 1978.
It has grown to the astonishing circulation of 26 million,
specializes in service features and has published other reader
polls. It has thrived on controversy in the past, publishing
glasnost-enlightened statistics on the number of Stalin's
victims and the country's budget deficit, as well as admiring
profiles of Western millionaires. But a poll that gave top
ratings to Gorbachev's leading critics clearly had tested, and
broken, glasnost's boundaries. It was hardly the type of news
Gorbachev and other leaders wanted to read at a time when
support for the party was visibly eroding and Establishment
candidates faced even more serious challenges in local
elections, scheduled to be held in some republics beginning in
December.

    Gorbachev may also have been displeased by a pair of
letters, pro and con, about his own performance as Chairman of
the Supreme Soviet. ``Many thanks to M.S. Gorbachev for his
self-control, his modesty, his culture, his ability to listen,
to restrain and persuade several undisciplined Deputies," went
one missive. But another writer castigated Gorbachev for "the
way he forces his opinion on Deputies, his commentaries on many
speeches, the elections without alternative candidates, the
pressure shown during voting . . ."

    Last week Starkov was summoned to the Central Committee
office of Vadim Medvedev, the party's chief ideologist, and
urged to resign. Normally such an invitation, which
unquestionably reflects the wishes of Gorbachev, would be an
irrefusable offer. But Starkov so far remains in his job.
"Everything here is normal," he said late last week. "I put my
signature on this week's edition, and I plan to sign the next
one too. Mistakes sometimes happen." Starkov retains the support
of his staff, some of whom have threatened to go out on strike,
while worried readers have been pestering phone-in television
shows, inquiring about the fate of the editor.

    Gorbachev may have targeted Starkov as a sop to
conservatives, then moved against his real target: Afanasyev.
Said Vitali Korotich, editor in chief of the liberal weekly
Ogonyok: "Gorbachev is an experienced politician who does things
in combinations." Another element in this combination may be a
new press law under consideration by the Supreme Soviet. The
measure, which has been welcomed by liberals, purports to
abolish censorship and provides for creation of independent
publications with none of the organizational sponsorship now
required.

    But other Soviet journalists did not exclude the
possibility that the campaign had been mounted against two men
who had something else in common: they dared to print something
that displeased Gorbachev.