Popular Moscow Newspaper Is Back After Hiatus

One of Moscow’s best-known daily newspapers, the 5-year-old Nezavisimaya Gazeta, reappeared Tuesday after a gap of nearly five months and a bitter internal battle between its editor and his critics.

Its founder, Vitaly Tretyakov, who used security guards last month to fight an attempt by staff members to oust him, said the battle for control of the newspaper was like a detective story.

“I must admit my personal responsibility for what happened,” he wrote in an editorial, comparing himself to Russia’s last czar, Nicholas II, whose mistakes helped provoke the Bolshevik Revolution.

The paper, whose name means “Independent Gazette” and which carries the Latin motto “without anger and passion” above its masthead, has been losing money and readership. It has a circulation of about 50,000, mostly in Moscow, and carries virtually no advertising.

Tretyakov said he now has financial backing to develop the paper and hopes to woo other investors.

Because of the paper’s financial problems, reporters have been earning as little as the equivalent of $20 a month.