Editor of Moscow News who led the charge in breaking Soviet taboos during the glasnost era
「You can't go to bed a mute and wake up talking」: on the incremental widening of what could be said as censorship eased.
A Moscow Historical Archive Institute graduate, he worked as an Izvestia correspondent and founding editor of Zhurnalist magazine before his appointment in August 1986 as deputy chairman of Novosti Press Agency and editor-in-chief of Moscow News. He transformed the weekly from a 35,000-copy English-language propaganda sheet into a glasnost flagship printing 3 million copies in eight languages. Week after week he broke taboos (Stalin's purges, the Afghan war, KGB operations, religion) and during the August 1991 coup he rallied 11 independent newspapers to produce the joint edition Obshchaya Gazeta in defiance of the putschists.
Career Timeline
- 1954Graduates from Moscow Historical Archive Institute
- 1956–1966Reporter at Moskovskaya Pravda, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Izvestia
- 1967–1968Founds and edits Zhurnalist magazine
- 1968–1985Izvestia special correspondent, Prague bureau
- 1986–1991Deputy chairman of APN, editor-in-chief of Moscow News
- 1991–1992Chairman, All-Union and Russian State TV and Radio
- 1993–2002Publisher of Obshchaya Gazeta