Moscow News

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For the Imperial Russian newspaper, see Moscow News (Imperial Russia).

The Moscow News, which began publication in 1930, is Russia’s longest-running independent English language weekly newspaper. Some of its articles are translated from Moskovskiye Novosti. The paper's current managing editor is Anthony Louis, the former owner and publisher of "The Moscow Tribune," who was appointed following a 50-50 merger between RIA Novosti and "Moskovskiye Novosti". The Moscow News was previously owned by Arcadi Gaydamak, a businessman who now lives in Israel who proposed in March 2006 to buy back 100% of France Soir shares ^[1].

[edit] History

The paper, which has been translated into many different languages and distributed across the world, was originally founded by American socialist Anne-Louisa Strong and approved by Joseph Stalin in 1930 as an international newspaper with the purpose of propagandizing its foreign audience. The original paper was published in many languages, including French, Spanish and Arabic.

The paper was shut down in 1949 after its editor-in-chief, Mikhail Borodin, was arrested and died in the Gulags. It continued publication in January 4, 1956, but under hard control of the Communist Party.

At the onset of perestroika, the freeing of the press gave it the opportunity to openly address the democratic processes. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, Moscow News became one of the first papers to experiment with glasnost. In this new incarnation its readership grew dramatically to one million copies per week.

Under Putin, and suffering from declining sales, Moscow News was bought by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, one of Russia's oligarchs and owner of Yukos. Khodorovsky hired Yevgeny Kiselyov, an outspoken liberal journalist who started a scandal in the ranks by firing 9 journalists. Kiselyov was eventually replaced and the paper enjoys a growing readership today.

The paper has many prolific writers, including American expatriate Robert Bridge, whose "American in Moscow" column has achieved critical acclaim in the Russian capital.

The Moscow News has had numerous other owners, and as such has never considered itself an instrument of any particular governmental group. Ogonyok, International Book, and the All-Union Society of Cultural Ties with Foreign Countries among others have controlled the newspaper at one time or another.