English Version of Pravda--Will It Sell in Peoria?

American readers soon will be able to pick up an English-language version of Pravda, the official organ of the Soviet Communist Party, and read items like the following front-page story, quoted here in its entirety:

“LVOV, AUG. 17 (‘Pravda’ Corr. V. Drozd.) Four rotors for centrifugal compressors were sent to oil drillers by the Borislavski Experimental Foundry-Mechanical Factory Collective. Tests confirmed the high effectiveness of the novelty.”

Will Americans pay $630 a year for a daily translation of Pravda, complete with the same content, layout, cartoons and photographs of elk, aviators and Nicaraguan army recruits?

The response has been surprisingly good, said C. Christopher Cox, a registered Republican, Newport Beach attorney and self-declared entrepreneur who is co-owner of a company established for the purpose of publishing Pravda in English.

Three sample issues have been produced, and daily publication is expected to start in December or early next year, just in time to cash in on a resurgence of interest in Soviet affairs expected after the Geneva summit.

Advertisements have appeared in magazines, including Foreign Affairs and the Columbia Journalism Review, and mailings with sample issues have been sent to hundreds of universities and other institutions.

“Imagine the impact of being able to say, ‘And here, I quote from Pravda,’ ” a promotional brochure says.

“We’re continually revising our projections upward,” said Cox, a graduate of USC and Harvard Business School.

Word of the venture has reached Pravda editors in Moscow, according to Vitaly Gan, the newspaper’s recently arrived Washington correspondent. “They were amused, as far as I remember,” Gan said.

At the Soviet Embassy, spokesman Boris Malakhov said he is looking forward to seeing the English-language Pravda.

“If it is true to what is said in the Russian version, then it is harmless, but if something is planted, and the translation is dishonest, it can be harmful,” he said.

The new publication, which will be delivered about two weeks late in packages of seven issues each, is not the first to supply Soviet journalism to the American public.

Those interested in Soviet affairs can have Pravda in Russian delivered about a week after publication date, for $140 a year.

They can also subscribe to the Current Digest of the Soviet Press, which translates and summarizes key articles from 95 Soviet periodicals, at $515 a year.

Staffers at the Current Digest’s office in Columbus, Ohio, said they are not daunted by the prospect of competition.

“So much of Pravda is just sort of chaff,” said Sandy Goodrich, business manager of the Current Digest. “So while it might be interesting to see what it is saying word for word, after a while it might get kind of dull.”

Cox said, however, that he believes the complete version in English fills a need. He said he came up with the idea after reading a magazine’s second-hand report of Pravda’s views on the 1984 U.S. presidential race.

The report was interesting, but fragmentary and out of date, he said.

“I checked to see if I could subscribe to a translation of Pravda on a regular basis and discovered it was not available,” he said. “Having read Pravda as a Russian-language student in college, I knew that it wasn’t a long paper and that it was susceptible to translation.”

His father, former publisher Charles C. Cox, is newly retired, and the two decided to see if there was a market for an English-language version of the newspaper that is required reading for everybody who is anybody in the Soviet Union.

After a legal check revealed no apparent problems, they conferred with Russian-language experts, assembled a team of about 20 translators and editors and put out a sample issue.

Soviet Embassy spokesman Malakhov said, however, that his country is looking into possible copyright violations. No conclusions have yet been reached, he said. The Soviet Union joined the Universal Copyright Convention in 1973.

Saturday Night Live

Among the early subscribers to the English-language Pravda was NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” television show, whose writers apparently plan to use it as raw material for jokes. Others included the White House, several embassies and university libraries.

An unexpected number of subscriptions have come in from the general public, said Charles Cox, who supervises the day-to-day operations of the Cox firm, Associated Publishers of St. Paul, Minn.

He declined to provide subscription figures for fear of revealing information that might help a potential competitor. He said, however, that it is strictly a business venture.

“This is something that has to stand on its own feet,” he said.

Despite the frequent reports on Soviet affairs that appear in the American media, subscribers “feel the information they have available is so scarce that they see this as an open window they can really utilize,” he said in a telephone interview.

Although Pravda (the name means truth) occasionally contains unflattering information about the Soviet Union, it is replete with Communist propaganda, from the slogan “Proletarians of the World, Unite!” atop Page 1 through features like an interview with the head of the Soviet Air Force and an article on arms talks headlined “The U.S.S.R.’s Good Example.”

The Coxes, who declined to talk about their own political views, said they prefer to let the newspaper’s contents speak for themselves.

“It would be a terrible thing for the project if anybody let their personal thoughts interfere with the pure academic value of it. Our point is strictly informational,” Charles Cox said.

Translated by a team of Soviet emigres and American students of the Russian language, the English-language Pravda seeks to come as close as possible to the unique tone of the original.

In addition to the front-page story about centrifugal compressors, the Aug. 18 sample edition included a report on a Communist festival in Denmark, a page of foreign news, several updates on the grain harvest and an editorial urging fair distribution of benefits to workers.

“Such ugly phenomena as bribery, speculation, parasitism, protectionism and misappropriation of public property turn up,” the editorial said. “It is necessary to struggle resolutely with them, using the whole force of law. . . .”

Another article told of a visit by pianist Sviatoslav Richter to a collective farm. Describing the musician’s sweaty brow as he performed for the assembled tractor operators and milkmaids, the author said, “Nothing in life is given free. . . . You have to take care of the cow’s nipples, and the pianist has piano keys to take care of. Real success can be based only on endless labor.”

Sovietologists might seize on such references as a reflection of Communist Party Chairman Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s determination to revitalize the Soviet Union’s stagnant economy. But most Soviet experts are already reading the same stories in the original Russian-language Pravda.

Still, specialists at UCLA said they see some usefulness in the new publication.

“This will give the American reader a sense of what the Soviet elite have to read every morning before they start their daily routine at the office,” said Roman Kolkowicz, a political science professor at the Westwood campus.

Since Pravda is the daily voice of the ruling Politburo, it is “must reading, literally, for anybody who is anyone,” Kolkowicz said. “That’s where the line is set, that’s where the line is changed. And woe to any Soviet bureaucrat when he fails to understand that the line has changed. He’s really in trouble.”

Kolkowicz said he found the English-language version “reasonably good,” but his colleague, William C. Potter, executive director of UCLA’s Center for International and Strategic Affairs, said it would be more valuable to undergraduate students and the general public than to specialists.

“The translation may provide a useful function, if only to demonstrate just how dull much of the Soviet media is and the task that confronts the Soviet specialist,” Potter said. “It’s not a particularly exciting newspaper to read.”