Black and White, and Red All Over

Pravda prints all the news that fits the party line

In periods of East-West tension, passages from its pages are quoted in the Western press like captured battlefield communiques. Specialists in Bonn, London, Paris and Washington sift through its stilted, often impenetrable prose searching for subtle shifts in foreign policy. Photographs of the ruling elite are scrutinized for changes in status, and cartoons are scoured for arcane political references. "Pravda," says its editor, Victor Afanasyev, "is read on the lines and between the lines."

Indeed, few newspapers are read as closely or taken as seriously as Pravda (circ. 11 million), the Soviet Union's leading daily. (Second in importance is Izvestiya, the government daily, circ. 8.6 million.) The paper is published by the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party and toes the party line, hence the government line, on matters great and small. Pravda means truth, but when facts and ideology collide, ideology prevails. Says Thomas Kolesnichenko, Pravda correspondent in New York: "We try to give people a story that is true, but in terms of a historical perspective, in terms of our understanding of world events."

Pravda is skinny compared with U.S. dailies (only six pages most days), partly because there are no advertisements, partly because newsprint supplies are chronically short. But the paper's production and distribution system dwarfs anything in the West. Pages are transmitted by satellite to printing plants in more than 40 cities, so the whole country gets delivery the same morning. Pravda employs 180 editors and writers in Moscow, 60 staff reporters around the country and 40 foreign correspondents. Fewer than half of these journalists come from journalism schools; the rest have worked their way up from small papers or party positions.

Each morning at 11, Afanasyev and his 30 deputy and department editors meet to make final changes in that day's edition and to lay out most of the following day's paper. All decisions are made with the party in mind. A full member of the party Central Committee, Afanasyev has direct access to top government leaders, including Leonid Brezhnev. The paper's two dozen departments (divided by geographical area and subject matter) are in close contact with the party's propaganda department and with government bureaus. Yet Afanasyev denies that everything in the paper is dictated by apparatchiks. Says he: "In reality, we do the majority of our stories ourselves. Our commentators [the equivalent of U.S. columnists] often express their own point of view. As a whole, of course, it coincides with the view of the party, but shadings could be different."

Because Pravda is, in effect, the voice of the party, the paper does not have a government censor. The editors are responsible for blue-penciling incorrect thinking, but they rarely have to. Explains Arkadi Polishchuk, a New York-based emigre who sometimes writes for Pravda: "A Soviet journalist knows what will pass and what won't. He has an 'inner editor' within him. One step out of line and a journalist's career is washed up."

The most important news in Pravda is not always on the front page--which consists of major editorials, official announcements, and fanfare about grand Soviet achievements in industry, agriculture and foreign affairs. Page 2 contains mostly economic reports and party news; page 3, science, culture and reader letters; pages 4 and 5 cover items from Soviet bloc countries, international and breaking news; page 6, sports, television listings and feature stories. Thus, in one issue last week, a story about summer health resorts for factory workers is found on Page One, while an analysis of the U.S. presidential race is on page 5.

Stories about the West almost invariably emphasize doom and gloom, with such headlines as SOCIETY OF VIOLATED RIGHTS or WORLD OF CAPITAL: SOCIAL PROBLEMS. Correspondents overseas do not deny that their primary duty is to promote socialism. Not long ago, for instance, Pravda's man in London joined a picket line of striking steelworkers, "for whom the class struggle is a daily reality, a necessity, a duty." Correspondents are restricted, however, in what they can say about foreign leaders. Says Afanasyev: "We don't attack Carter personally and we don't publish cartoons of him. We criticize him as a politician, not as a personality."

Abrupt changes in Soviet foreign policy sometimes force Pravda into improbable arabesques. Until late December, Afghanistan President Hafizullah Amin was hailed as a dear friend of the U.S.S.R.; the day after his assassination in a coup, he was pilloried as an "agent of American imperialism." Without mentioning that the Soviets had helped topple Amin, Pravda ran a front-page congratulatory message to his successor. The newspaper reported the invasion several days later, and then only with a brief item from TASS, the Soviet news agency, disclosing that the U.S.S.R. had acceded to an Afghan request for military aid. A few days after that, Pravda described the invasion force as "a limited Soviet military contingent to be used exclusively as aid in repulsing outside armed interference." This became the official Soviet line.

Pravda makes no mention of train crashes, crime rates, consumer purchasing power, state security matters, subsidies for athletes, or political disputes. Several years ago, when a number of workmen were killed at the site of its own new headquarters building on Pravda Street, the paper ignored the accident. Pravda has an aversion to admitting mistakes, preferring to run a second, and accurate article at some future date.

The paper seems to be doing more muckraking these days, usually focusing on misfeasance by major and minor officials. Afanasyev says the editors approve such articles when they feel that the reports will "improve the situation." Say he: "We are not interested in scandals in private life or discrediting an official. We do not do anything that can hurt our way of life, our system, our principles."

To what extent readers believe Pravda 's idealized version of Soviet life is difficult to determine. The paper's various responses to reader requests for information and advice are followed avidly (see box). Indeed, Pravda's New York correspondent says he gets calls from Soviet emigres who want the paper to write about their problems in finding jobs and housing. All told, Pravda received (and answered) more than 600,000 letters last year, a measure of reader loyalty that most Western editors would envy.

But readers who like their newspapers free, fat and unfettered will not like Pravda. It is best known abroad not for its news coverage but for the pseudonymous, party-commissioned pieces by "I. Alexandrov" that are used to send signals to the West. The composite Alexandrov is a fitting metaphor for journalism in the U.S.S.R. Says Polishchuk: "Soviet journalists are in complete unison with the voice of the state. Any of them could be I. Alexandrov at any given time."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.