Fired Pravda Editor Loses Another Post
Viktor G. Afanasyev, fired as editor of the Communist Party daily newspaper Pravda in October, was relieved Wednesday as chairman of the Union of Journalists, the official news agency Tass said.
Ivan Laptev, editor of the official government newspaper Izvestia and one of the leading liberal journalists, was elected to succeed the 68-year-old Afanasyev as the head of the Union of Journalists, it said.
During his 13-year tenure as Pravda’s chief editor, Afanasyev kept the Communist Party daily so conservative that its circulation dropped precipitously amid the reformist perestroika , or restructuring campaign by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
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