MEDIA / TAKEOVER BATTLE : Press Freedom, Soviet-Style

After decades of Communist Party control, Soviet newspapers won their independence in a legislative battle earlier this year, but for the prestigious Literaturnaya Gazeta, the fight for freedom is far from over.

Journalists at Literaturnaya Gazeta--Literary Gazette in Russian--registered the popular liberal weekly as an independent newspaper at the beginning of last month. But the Writers’ Union, the longtime owner, has been fighting to hold on to the profitable paper.

“It’s a battle for the spirit of Literaturnaya Gazeta,” said Yuri Shchekochikhin, a 10-year veteran of the publication.

“But it’s more a question of money than of spirit for the Writers’ Union,” added a colleague, Aristarkh G. Andrianov.

Soviet journalists officially gained their freedom Aug. 1 under a new press law that grants any group of Soviet citizens the right to found its own newspaper. Censors who formerly combed each article before it hit the presses were eliminated. But the law did not guarantee that the organizations that owned the papers would give them up easily.

The Ministry Always Resists: “It’s a very typical situation in the Soviet Union these days,” Vladimir N. Sokolov, member of the Gazette’s editorial board, said. “The Writers’ Union is acting like all other ministries are acting these days when an enterprise is trying to break away and become independent. The ministry is always categorically against the independence. We write about this pattern all the time--now we’re facing it ourselves.”

The Gazette, with a circulation of 4.5 million, is the big money-maker for the Writers’ Union, which publishes many other less popular journals, some of them far to the right politically, with profits from its leftist flagship. The newspaper has had to hand over 35% of its profits to the union.

“The union publishes Literaturnaya Rossiya and Literaturnaya Moskva--our conservative enemies--with our money,” Shchekochikhin said. “It’s idiotic.”

The union also uses the Gazette’s profits to supplement pensions for aged writers, and to build resorts and vacation houses.

The union polled its members about the paper’s independence, said Vladimir Karpov, first secretary of the union. “Ninety-nine percent, maybe more, say they support our position.”

You Win Some and You Lose Some: Several battles in the war for the ownership of the Gazette have already been waged. In August, the union won a victory by persuading the Soviet agency that registers newspapers to refuse Literaturnaya Gazeta’s application as an independent newspaper. But in early September, the Russian Federation’s press ministry, which registers newspapers in the largest Soviet republic, agreed to accept the application.

Now the union is suing the Russian ministry and the journalists are preparing to sue the Soviet ministry. The journalists are also likely to sue the union for “stealing” the newspaper’s money, Shchekochikhin said. All of the newspaper’s savings, which may amount to the equivalent of a few million dollars at the official exchange rate, Sokolov said, were claimed by the union. This week, the union changed its strategy. In a article published Monday in Pravda, the Communist Party daily, Karpov announced that the union will open a new weekly newspaper--also called Literaturnaya Gazeta.