The World - News from Dec. 14, 1988

A leading Soviet liberal weekly, the Literary Gazette, announced that its 75-year-old editor, Alexander B. Chakovsky, has retired and has been replaced by a senior Communist Party official. The new editor, Yuri P. Voronov, 59, had headed the Party Central Committee’s Cultural Department--now being disbanded under President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s political reforms--for the last three years. Literary sources said that Voronov has a reputation as a strong supporter of reforms. Chakovsky, known for novels about World War II praising the leadership of Josef Stalin, had increasingly appeared out of place at the Gazette, which has championed a drive to reveal the horrors of Stalin’s rule.