Once the Bosses Loved the Press : Soviets Outgrowing Precooked News

Today we are moving away from the trance into which Soviet society once lapsed--either on orders or from sheer fright--to a concrete assessment of all that has happened to us.

We are reading our press with unprecedented attention, we are peering intently into the TV screens. We are rethinking ourselves and our place in life.

Transforming society and telling the truth are daunting propositions in this country, where we still have laws--never formally renounced--that could land half, if not all, of the most fervent glasnost supporters in jail.

Confusion reigns in the house under reconstruction. Apart from looking for new paths to the future, we are also thinking over the plans for today’s salvation. And we want to understand our past--although this is no easy task, because many crucial documents are still out of circulation.

The Soviet press symbolizes the biggest achievement of perestroika. For the first time, the press represents a threat to those who would like to arrest the positive changes in the Soviet Union. That is why it lives amid constant attempts to slow it down, to apply the brakes.

The relationship between events and the reporting of events is traditionally complicated. In the absence of even a hint of a law on the mass media (although the Soviet legislature is working on one), too much depends on the boss and his whim.

There were times when the bosses loved us! This love reached its peak 10 or 15 years ago, when the press was swimming in a torrent of sunny news. The Soviet people read the papers meditatively while standing in endless lines, and at best their attitude toward the press was that of compassion. But the bosses loved us!

It was then that one of the most ridiculously showcased publications, Ogonyok, received the country’s highest decoration, the Lenin Order. The magazine was horrible, but eminently tame, which was the reason it received the order. Ogonyok’s tales of prosperity flowed merrily on; to express doubts of the actual existence of prosperity was not only unpatriotic but also subject to legal action.

Repression is not the only weapon against the media. They can also be pampered and domesticated.

It seems that Soviet society has a stable, unchanging allotment of optimism. Sometimes the bulk of optimism is in the upper levels of power, and sometimes it flows downward, to the people, leaving the leaders in a state of deep worry.

In this country, the population has never rejoiced as a whole. In the years of terror, Josef Stalin and his team beamed from countless posters and official photographs. Today, as we move tortuously toward democracy and renovation, the bureaucracy demonstrates profound pessimism or even outrage. The picture of a beaming leader today is a rarity.

The bureaucrats had been building the country for themselves. Now they are doomed to fight to the death. They have no choice.

But this is also true of the rest of the country. Having started to think and analyze, the people cannot stop, no matter who tells them to do so.

With this new habit of thinking, we are making discoveries that add little to our feeling of comfort. For instance, we have discovered that there are a great many dishonest people among our leaders. The main criterion for selection to the top jobs in this country was always the ability to obey, rather than brains or original ideas. Unquestioned loyalty to ideological dogmas was always worth more than professionalism. Because loyalty is much easier to simulate than competence and knowledge, the share of cynical and dishonest functionaries steadily grew in our leadership.

That was true everywhere. When I entered the editorial office of Ogonyok for the first time, I discovered a long list of names under the glass on the desk. This proved to be the complete list of birthdays of all the Politburo members and the Central Committee secretaries. Next to each name, careful notes were made: whose portrait was to be published in color and whose in mere black and white on the required day.

I asked if a special Central Committee decree had been adopted on the subject, or perhaps it was simply the initiative of my overzealous predecessor. “There was no special decision,” was the answer, “but no one has ever objected.”

Is it necessary to mention that my predecessor, who successfully killed the old Ogonyok, was pensioned off with the title of the Hero of Socialist Labor?

Even in this time of change, the official “fighting unit” functions as before. I refer to the Communist Party’s daily Pravda, as well as subservient television and radio.

People in this country had long been accustomed to a precooked dish of news, instead of separate components with which everyone makes his own meal. The country lived on a diet of commentary rather than reporting. But a new generation of readers is emerging along with a new generation of reporters.

The bureaucrats open their mailboxes with trepidation every morning. This not so much because some unexpected article or a block-busting interview might appear. The problem is that social control is slipping from their grip.

A process of serious, dignified thinking is going on in the country, and this is reflected in the mass media. The censors remove one, two or more articles, but this no longer changes the overall situation. With the absence of a press law, the relationships between the editor and the censor are full of mystery and half-legal actions, relying for the most part on the temperaments of both.

Freedom of expression is a complicated phenomenon in a country unable to feed its population and apprehensive of awakening thought. We are trying to steer the middle course between China and Poland. The Communist Party does not intend to lose its monopoly on power as in Poland, but neither does it plan to support its authority with tanks as it did in China. This makes the press the crucially important instrument.

We are building the country. We are trying to create a new society, where time-honored traditions and institutions will be given new places and functions.

I am editing a magazine that fights for this goal, for the new society and for the new place in it for ourselves. “Please, don’t be afraid,” the readers are encouraging us. “Write the truth!” This is a completely new situation in the Soviet press: We now depend on people who are craving the truth. Let it be forever!