Some publications not previously considered radical began to take on a patina of radicalism. Nedelya, the weekly supplement of the decidedly middle-of-the-road Izvestia, is the obvious example. Only a thoroughgoing cynic, however, would suggest that they had done so solely in an attempt to lure readers by catering to fashion. Yet there was no doubt at least as to which were the true radical journals. They are the weekly newspaper Moscow News and the weekly magazine Ogonyok. I was counting on the freemasonry of journalists to gain me admittance to both places.
The News was founded in 1930 and owned jointly by Novosti and an organization called the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. Accordingly there were editions in English, French, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Estonian, and Arabic, with an aggregate circulation of 300,000, as compared with 500,000 copies of the Russian-language original. The offices were situated on one of the most advantageous pieces of real estate in Moscow. On a bright moderate day, too warm for a coat, too cool for just a pullover, I decided to walk there, a distance of several kilometres, rather than add to my knowledge of Moscow’s extraordinarily ornate metro stations.
Gorky Street begins within easy sight of the Kremlin and runs north-west. Near the foot is the National Hotel, built at the turn of the century and once the U.S. embassy, before the Revolution forced its move to the present building in Tchaikovsky Street (and of course before the attempted new one, which the Americans discovered was riddled with hidden listening devices and so was razed even before they had finished constructing it). Farther up was the headquarters of TASS, the telegraph agency and news service. Its corner building is recognizable instantly by the huge globe over the entrance; the globe is supposed to revolve, but it had stopped working 20 some years ago and was never repaired. But mostly this wide and orderly boulevard, with some architecture going back to Napoleonic times, is lined with the city’s, and the country’s, finest shops; mews and side streets contain hidden parks and luxury flats. Many buildings are marked with commemorative tablets, each with a portrait relief, showing some historical figure who once lived there, and it seems clear that there will be a cause for more such plaques in future generations, for this is the haunt of the famous and the well rewarded. One richly decorated white building, I was told, is full mainly of ballet stars. My informant told me the flats have particularly high ceilings; I replied that this is probably best in the circumstances.
More than any other district, Gorky Street shows the extraordinary old European city that underlies our preconceived notions about Moscow, showing it to be the poor sister of London or Paris but a full sibling when it comes to complexity, age, size, style, and even grandeur. Which made it all the more significant that the Moscow News should occupy one corner of Gorky Street and Pushkin Square, the most Westernized place in this Westernized boulevard. Across the way, for example, is the world’s largest and by no means most unpleasant McDonald’s, owned by George Cohon of Toronto and employing 600 Muscovites. On opening day they faced a crowd of 30,000 customers and, as one of my new acquaintances put it, “ascended quickly to the record book of Guinness.” Whenever I passed by during my stay, hundreds of people were queuing to get in—queuing eagerly, it seemed to me, without the resignation that always appears to mark the faces of those passing their time in the constant lineups for staple goods. But kitty-corner, outside the News, there was a large crowd hungry for something more nourishing. When the paper first came out each Tuesday, its 16 pages were pinned up in display cases running along the side of the building, and citizens jostled one another for the chance to read the news. That side of Pushkin Square is a traditional spot for such anticipation, and a perplexing variety of newspapers is vended there.
Many Soviet papers organized their physical plants on the German plan, with one composing room and one stand of presses working round the clock on a cooperative basis to produce newspapers of different sorts and allegiances, each of which maintained only its editorial shop as a separate operation apart from the rest. The Moscow News was different, though. It had its own exclusive plant, which was located some distance from the editorial rooms in Pushkin Square. The arrangement was made all the more awkward because the News, like virtually all the Soviet press, had not yet progressed to computerized production.
Two months before my visit, the offices were gutted by a fire, and I found the staff holed up in temporary quarters in an adjoining building whose lobby still smelled strongly of smoke. “There was no suggestion of arson,” explained Sergei Volovets, one of the editors and the paper’s former London correspondent, when I located him at the end of a slot-like room, perhaps two metres wide and six metres deep. “It was an accident. But the fire was several storeys up, and the fire brigade poured so much water on the blaze that the floors below were ruined, too.” Hundreds of readers from many countries contributed to a relief fund. “We hope to get permission from city council to start rebuilding soon,” he said. “The climate here makes it difficult to begin work of this sort except in the summer, and we must be finished before the cold comes, because the building we are in now has no heat.” City Hall had bandied about the phrase “two months.”
The News was the sort of newspaper that you wanted to hug or applaud. It was quick to attack the Chinese for the outrage at Tiananmen Square and was critical of Li Peng during his visit. It had been hard on both Gorbachev and Ligachev on point after point, sometimes even recklessly so, to judge by the English-language edition I read, but there was a consistent logical voice from behind the formidable amount of information it provided, information, it would seem, that was often available nowhere else. One of its memorable scoops dealt with two former prosecutors who became members of the Supreme Soviet only to discover organized corruption in the highest echelons of that chamber; the pair narrowly avoided being charged by the attorney general after the News began printing their revelations. Similarly it was the News that finally proved that the wartime massacre of Polish officers at Katyn, an event the Soviet Union had always attributed to the Nazis, was in fact the work of Stalin’s henchmen, just as the Poles had suspected for 50 years. “And our stand on Lithuania differs from the official line in a number of respects,” Volovets said with a smile of understatement. The paper was too extreme for the Cubans and at one point was banned even in Hungary.
What struck me most in the issues I read was a certain trenchancy, even down to the back pages devoted to culture, where one day I found this item by a contributor named Alexander Vershinin:
It is a cultural event when new books appear on a library shelf. When books disappear from the shelves—this, too, can be an important cultural event. But the main thing is to know what will be put there instead.
I got a call from the library where I used to lecture about the theatre: “Tomorrow Brezhnev’s works will go into the shredder. If you want them, you’d better hurry.”
I went and stared at the shelves. Hundreds of heavy volumes—the majority being red. The paper was high-grade, the covers were excellent, and the minimum printed copy runs were 100,000. But what was most remarkable were the titles. For about an hour I rummaged through them, getting pretty dusty in the process.
Brezhnev, On Internationalism and Friendship of the People—150,000 copies. Brezhnev, The Virgin Lands—3,250,000 copies. Brezhnev, Rebirth— 3,250,000 copies. Brezhnev, Following Lenin’s Course in nine volumes—each 300,000 copies. Brezhnev, Matters of Topical Interest in the CPSU Ideological Work, in two volumes, 1978—100,000. Brezhnev, Matters of Topical Interest in the CPSU Ideological Work, 1979, in two volumes, second edition, enlarged, 1979 (the only change is the Fourth Star of the Hero in the portrait)—300,000.
On Lenin and Leninism—100,000 copies. Guarding Peace and Socialism— 100,000. It Is for the Young to Build Communism. The Party and the Government’s Concern About the People’s Well-Being, book two. The Party and the Government’s Concern About the People’s Well-Being, book three, part two. Ponomaryov, Selected Works. Romanov, Selected Works. Ustinov, Selected Works. Andropov,