A New and Better Pravda?

By Jill Smolowe

When Mikhail Gorbachev decided a year ago that the Communist Party daily Pravda needed a face-lift, he appointed Politburo ally and confidant Ivan Frolov, 61, to perform the surgery. Frolov quickly pledged that the conservative Soviet mouthpiece would strive to reflect the "pluralism of opinions" within the Communist Party. But the promised glasnost failed to materialize. Last month at an open party meeting, Pravda employees angrily demanded their editor in chief's resignation. Frolov, they fumed, was high- handed, rude and a sycophant of the worst order. Staff members charged that he muzzled editorial voices and blocked attempts to modernize the paper's gray pages, thus driving away readers.

Initially, Frolov offered to resign. But after the Central Committee insisted that he stay put, he went on the offensive. Last week he announced a new and more autonomous Pravda, one that will be independently managed, will accept advertising from foreign firms and will strive harder to woo back readers. Although the paper will retain "deep ideological ties" with the party, it will be run by an independent association that will not only publish Pravda (the name means truth) and its Sunday supplement but will also develop a television program, an international edition and a string of advertising supplements.

Frolov claimed the autonomy of the Pravda Association, whose membership is as yet undetermined, would free the paper and its new ventures from control and funding by the Central Committee. Instead, money will be provided by foreign advertisers and unnamed "major international information magnates."

The Pravda bailout plan is a bold answer to desperate circumstances. During the past two years, the newspaper's circulation has slipped from 10 million readers to 7.7 million, and it is expected to drop to 3 million in 1991. Pravda's declining appeal is in part caused by higher subscription costs, imposed while the economy is virtually at a standstill. But a more profound reason is the simple fact that Soviet citizens no longer need to put up with an unappetizing diet of Communist propaganda. Rather, they can turn to a welter of new publications at street kiosks, from the liberal weekly Moscow News and Tema, a newspaper that supports gay and lesbian rights, to the business weekly Commersant and Protestant, a Baptist newspaper.

Pravda's 500 employees were quick to ask where the new association's funding would come from. Frolov did not say where he would get the 1 billion rubles needed to cover a year's rent on a television studio for the planned video show. But foreign advertising may be a pipe dream. Last May Pravda offered 150 U.S. business executives the opportunity to run full-page ads at approximately $50,000 each; the response was tepid.

That leaves the "international magnate" solution. Pravda employees speculate that Frolov was referring to British publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell, who has visited Gorbachev twice this year, as a potential backer. A day after Frolov's announcement, the youth daily Komsomolskaya Pravda charged that Maxwell had recently pulled out of a joint venture with the independent Moscow News and closed the paper's London edition without warning. Even if a white knight comes to Frolov's rescue, it is hard to see how the beleaguered editor can effectively implement all the much needed changes.

With reporting by Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow