Gorbachev Lifts Party Monopoly on Radio, TV

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, in a landmark decree on media freedom, on Sunday ordered the immediate diversification of the Soviet Union’s state-run radio and television system so that all political movements will have access to the airwaves, ending the Communist Party’s monopoly.

Under the presidential decree, all political parties, republican and local governments, and public organizations will have the right to establish their own television and radio stations or to acquire time or lease equipment from the State Television and Radio Committee or the Communications Ministry.

The decree, which was read in full Sunday on the main evening news program “Vremya,” also orders government officials to make available frequencies, channels and even broadcasting time on state-run stations to the new alternative electronic media.

The immediate effect will likely be the establishment of scores of local radio stations across the country, many of them probably controlled by the Communists’ rapidly emerging political opposition.

“The democratization of society, the growth of the role of the sovereign union republics and the soviets (governing councils) of people’s deputies, and the real establishment of political pluralism--all demand cardinal changes in the character of television and radio broadcasting,” Gorbachev said in the decree.

To ensure the breakup of the present monopoly that the State Committee for Television and Radio exercises, Gorbachev called for the committee’s reorganization, including its division into competing production units.

Gorbachev, responding to complaints that both the radical and conservative opposition is being deliberately kept off Soviet television, also ordered that state-run radio and television become nonpartisan and no longer function as a propaganda tool of the Communist Party.

“The functions of state radio and television shall be carried out independently of political and public organizations and carry objective information from all sides on the processes under way in the country,” Gorbachev said.

“The monopolization of air time by one party or another, by a political movement or group, is impermissible, as is the use of state television and radio for propagating the personal political views of their workers.”

Television is an extremely powerful medium in the Soviet Union. Well over 100 million people, more than a third of the country’s population, watch the main evening news program every day.

Mikhail Nenashev, chairman of the State Committee for Television and Radio and a key Gorbachev adviser, said recently that the committee already had plans to expand its broadcasts from two to five national channels and to broaden its programming, now heavy on politics.

Gorbachev’s decree closely follows the spirit of the recently enacted press law, adopted last month, that begins, “The press and the other mass media are free. Censorship of the mass media is forbidden.”

That law, a year in preparation, gives any Soviet citizen the right to publish a newspaper or magazine and protects the freedom of journalists and publishers to report and comment.

Although political activists have been publishing their own newsletters with virtual impunity for several years, critics of the Communist Party and the government--and now the embryonic opposition parties--have also sought access to the airwaves to make their case.

Boris N. Yeltsin, the president of Russia, the largest of the Soviet Union’s 15 constituent republics, called last month for the establishment of the republic’s own television and radio stations, independent of those run by the central government.

Yeltsin acknowledged later that he wanted to be able to present his views “without going through the central government’s filter.” Yeltsin resigned from the Communist Party last week, saying that he could not obey its policies and do his duty as the president of Russia.

The broadcast of an interview with Yeltsin was delayed a day last month after the chairman of the State Committee for Television and Radio said that there would be too heavy a load of politics in the program lineup that day and ordered the interview held--a decision that Yeltsin charged was politically motivated to deprive him of a prime-time, national audience.

A number of members of the Congress of People’s Deputies, the national Parliament, and the Supreme Soviet, the legislature, complained recently that they are virtually barred from Soviet television because of their criticism of the party and its leadership.

In Leningrad, radical reformers on the new city council took over Leningrad television, invading the television center to enforce their decision, after officials there refused to broadcast an interview with a controversial anti-corruption investigator. The State Committee for Television and Radio now originates most of the Leningrad transmissions from Moscow.

Several programs that have become popular for their critical appraisals of the party, the government and the country’s whole bureaucracy have been placed under operating restrictions in the past year after protests from conservatives in the party.

And the Baltic republic of Lithuania, shortly after declaring its independence in March, took over its local television and radio networks--and immediately increased its Lithuanian programming and substituted programs from Leningrad and Warsaw for some of those from Moscow.