Moscow Blocks TV Report on Shevardnadze
Broadcasting officials today canceled a television program about the resignation of Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.
Alexander Lyubimov, presenter of the popular weekly Vzglyad (View), said the cancellation of today’s edition was especially troubling at a time when the country is taking a conservative turn.
Shevardnadze, an architect of reform under President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, resigned last week saying the Soviet Union was heading toward dictatorship. He denounced his critics as “reactionary.”
A spokeswoman for Vid, the company that produces Vzglyad, said a statement would be read before the program’s usual broadcast time to explain why it had been canceled.
“In essence, the announcement will say the program was canceled by the leadership of the State Committee for Radio and Television because of . . . a difference in opinion over events of the past year,” she told Reuters by telephone.
” . . . A difference between the leadership and the authors (of the program).”
The daily Moskovsky Komsomolets said that Leonid Kravchenko, head of the committee, had told Vzglyad journalists they should resign if their story of the resignation differed from Shevardnadze’s explanation to Parliament.
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