Soviet Union

By William R. Doerner

Victor Afanasyev and Vladislav Starkov are both journalists, but they're unlikely ever to share a byline. As editor of the gray-tinged daily Pravda, Afanasyev, 66, has been less than eager to rush into print any of the startling revelations or investigative spadework that has become the hallmark of glasnost. On the other hand, Starkov, 50, oversees the weekly tabloid Argumenty i Fakty, whose sharp prose and readers' letters more often than not dwell on the changes sweeping the country, and helped make the paper the most widely read in the Soviet Union. Yet last week both men faced pressures far worse than those posed by deadlines: Afanasyev was summarily fired from his job and Starkov's resignation was demanded by high Kremlin officials.

As the official voice of the Communist Party, Pravda could hardly avoid addressing President Mikhail Gorbachev's ambitious agenda. But the paper did so unevenly, sometimes approving changes and at other times reflecting the views of the Politburo's conservative members. As for investigative journalism that turned up scandals from the past, Afanasyev gradually grew tired of exhumed skeletons. "To dig around in the dirty linen of our history," he told the daily Sovetskaya Rossiya in September, "merely serves to lead people away from the solution of our contemporary problems."

Afanasyev suffered a nasty embarrassment last month, when Pravda reprinted a lurid dispatch from an Italian newspaper claiming that reformist Supreme Soviet Deputy Boris Yeltsin boozed and shopped his way through a tour of the U.S. The paper was later forced to publish an apology, even though tapes subsequently broadcast over Soviet television appeared to show Yeltsin at least mildly intoxicated. But Afanasyev's most serious failure was one that has also undone many an editor in the West: falling circulation. Over the past four years, as Soviet news buffs switched to livelier journalistic fare, Pravda's readership slipped from 10 million to 5 million.

Afanasyev was dismissed under the guise of requesting a "transfer to scientific work." Named as his replacement was Ivan Frolov, 60, by no coincidence a close Gorbachev ally. Frolov has held academic and journalistic posts, in 1986 and 1987 as editor of the ideological journal Kommunist. His stewardship of that once stiffly orthodox publication was marked by the introduction of new voices, including some that have been prominent in the perestroika movement.

Starkov's troubles began at a meeting two weeks ago between Gorbachev and leading media representatives. The Soviet President has held other such sessions, but this time he did all the talking. During a two-hour finger- wagging lecture, Gorbachev delivered a blistering attack on liberal elements of the press, accusing them of undermining the influence of the Communist Party. He was particularly thin-skinned about press coverage of the so-called Interregional Group of Deputies, a liberal caucus in the Supreme Soviet, whose members voice harsh criticism of Gorbachev's leadership that makes its way into print. Said Gorbachev: "We are standing knee deep in an ocean of gasoline, and you throw in lighted matches."

Gorbachev singled out an unscientific poll rating the popularity of leading Supreme Soviet Deputies that had appeared two weeks ago in Argumenty i Fakty. The four top scorers, based on 15,000 pieces of reader mail, were physicist Andrei Sakharov, economist Gavril Popov, Yeltsin and historian Yuri Afanasyev (no kin to Victor) -- every one a member of the Interregional Group A&F, which was founded by Starkov in 1978. It has grown to the astonishing circulation of 26 million, specializes in service features and has published other reader polls. It has thrived on controversy in the past, publishing glasnost-enlightened statistics on the number of Stalin's victims and the country's budget deficit, as well as admiring profiles of Western millionaires. But a poll that gave top ratings to Gorbachev's leading critics clearly had tested, and broken, glasnost's boundaries. It was hardly the type / of news Gorbachev and other leaders wanted to read at a time when support for the party was visibly eroding and Establishment candidates faced even more serious challenges in local elections, scheduled to be held in some republics beginning in December.

Gorbachev may also have been displeased by a pair of letters, pro and con, about his own performance as Chairman of the Supreme Soviet. "Many thanks to M.S. Gorbachev for his self-control, his modesty, his culture, his ability to listen, to restrain and persuade several undisciplined Deputies," went one missive. But another writer castigated Gorbachev for "the way he forces his opinion on Deputies, his commentaries on many speeches, the elections without alternative candidates, the pressure shown during voting . . ."

Last week Starkov was summoned to the Central Committee office of Vadim Medvedev, the party's chief ideologist, and urged to resign. Normally such an invitation, which unquestionably reflects the wishes of Gorbachev, would be an irrefusable offer. But Starkov so far remains in his job. "Everything here is normal," he said late last week. "I put my signature on this week's edition, and I plan to sign the next one too. Mistakes sometimes happen." Starkov retains the support of his staff, some of whom have threatened to go out on strike, while worried readers have been pestering phone-in television shows, inquiring about the fate of the editor.

Gorbachev may have targeted Starkov as a sop to conservatives, then moved against his real target: Afanasyev. Said Vitali Korotich, editor in chief of the liberal weekly Ogonyok: "Gorbachev is an experienced politician who does things in combinations." Another element in this combination may be a new press law under consideration by the Supreme Soviet. The measure, which has been welcomed by liberals, purports to abolish censorship and provides for creation of independent publications with none of the organizational sponsorship now required.

But other Soviet journalists did not exclude the possibility that the campaign had been mounted against two men who had something else in common: they dared to print something that displeased Gorbachev.

With reporting by John Kohan/Moscow