Thirty years ago a ticking time bomb was planted at the foundation of the great edifice of Soviet lies - the first issue of the weekly paper The Moscow News was published in Russian. At the time, no one noticed the bomb. Everyone's attention was focused on the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, the coeval of what later became a great newspaper. The Moscow News was supposed to continue the campaign to promote the Soviet lifestyle begun by the Moscow Olympics. It was supposed to convince western tourists that life was fun in the Soviet Union and the Soviet people were as happy in their everyday lives as the smiling people pictured in Aeroflot ads.
But these two words - "everyday lives" - acted as the bomb's detonator. Soviet life as reflected in the mirror of the Soviet media resembled life in a monastery. Soviets didn't just build, they created; they didn't sleep, they rested peacefully to gather strength for new feats; they didn't serve in the army, they performed their honorable duty to the motherland.
There was nothing earthly in this representation of life. Hardships were temporary; all alternative views had been discredited 50 years ago; and temptation did not exist because of the exceptional chastity and the cultural integrity of the entertainment offered to the Soviet people. The writer Yury Trifonov would bristle whenever he was criticized for digging too deep into everyday life. "My books are not about everyday life! I write about life!" he answered his critics. Finally a newspaper about everyday life in the Soviet Union had appeared.
The turning point in the history of The Moscow News came in 1986, when Yegor Yakovlev became editor in chief. He turned the newspaper into a training ground for the truth. His thinking was that the newspaper was geared toward international readers who were already used to reading about social problems, such as abortions, suicides, drug abuse and juvenile crime. Why pretend like these problems didn't exist in the Soviet Union? Readers ask questions, we provide answers - that was the approach of The Moscow News under Yakovlev. But it wasn't just foreign readers who learned about social problems in the Soviet Union; the Soviet people did, too. Interest in these issues may seem voyeuristic today, but that's what happens when you grow up in a monastery. After all, forbidden fruit tastes twice as sweet.
The Moscow News transformed the collective consciousness of the Soviet people, encouraging them to escape the hypocritical sanctity of their monastery. The amazing thing about The Moscow News between 1986 and 1988 is that it remained legal. The Soviet people had figured out that life was not all it could be. They had pieced it together from Western radio broadcasts, such as Voice of America, and rumors that the government could not suppress.
But foreign radio fell short of its mission. We couldn't understand their words in a sense, and not just because the broadcasts were jammed by the government, making the voices difficult to hear over the interference. The Moscow News was an official Soviet newspaper. If the paper raised an issue, it meant that this issue was officially recognized by the government and open for discussion. The newspaper gradually introduced new words and concepts in Soviet newspeak. It was like climbing a mountain.
First, The Moscow News had to scale the peak of "stagnation" - a concept that was officially recognized. Through the newspaper, the Soviet people learned that there were not only triumphs in their history, but also hypocrisy, cowardice and bureaucratic mediocrity, which the masses acquiesced to out of fear. The Moscow News launched a discussion about Stalin's crimes. It was not a discussion about his "violations of socialist legitimacy," but about the mass arrests, executions and, consequently, about the executioners themselves.
After that, The Moscow News cleared yet another peak, becoming the first Soviet media outlet to talk about dissidents without scorn. Readers could not believe their eyes. Every issue caused a sensation. How could The Moscow News publish a feature about the famous scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, who had just returned to Moscow from exile? How could the newspaper refer to Alexander Solzhenitsyn as a "Russian writer," and not a "traitor" or "outcast"? This was unprecedented during those times. These were the first rips in the web of lies shrouding the lives of the Soviet people.
When an article or a book causes a sensation, it's not due to the author's talent alone. It is the public that causes the sensation. Some people lined up at six in the morning to buy the latest issue of The Moscow News. These people were more than readers - they were the individual voices of a larger public sentiment that the government could not ignore.
After 1991, the newspaper fell victim to its early success. Yegor Yakovlev, whose authority came from his connections with Gorbachev's inner circle, was promoted by Boris Yeltsin to become the new head of television. Soon everyone was allowed to do the kind of the reporting The Moscow News had been doing. However, the economic hardships of the early 1990s showed that the truth isn't always a moneymaker. The truth allows you to keep your dignity intact, to feel like a human being. But how many people actually need this? A lot of people need it during times of social empowerment, like in the late 1980s. But hardly anyone needs it otherwise.
In the early 1990s, Communist Party control was replaced by the rule of bureaucrats and money bags. Russians had to learn that money can offer freedom, but it can also dumb people down and manipulate them. Nobody needs the truth in capitalist Russia, where the government can bankrupt the largest company with a mere wave of the hand. It's sometimes harder to break through the cobwebs of indifference and stupidity than a web of lies.
The new editors in chief of The Moscow News, Len Karpinsky and Viktor Loshak, did everything in their power to keep the best traditions of the newspaper alive. But this became increasingly difficult as the strong teams of professional journalists in the Russian press broke up. Two traditional talent pools of The Moscow News, Komsomolskaya Pravda and Izvestia, came tumbling down one after the other. They simply could not keep up with profit-driven media outlets. A new editor, Vitaly Tretyakov, one of the most successful members of Yakovlev's legendary team, attempted to breathe new life in The Moscow News. He revived the spirit of discussion, debate and political theater in the newspaper, which had become a bit stiff with liberal dogma. But the old Yakovlev approach fell short in the new environment.
The Moscow News is turning a new page. I hope the paper can stay on the cutting edge of the media while honoring its best traditions - to call out lies, however convenient, prestigious, glamorous, or modern they may seem.
Dmitry Babich, RIA Novosti commentator and former foreign editor of The Moscow News
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
