The weekly Ogonyok in Soviet and American public discourse
The image of the Soviet liberalisations in East and West
(1986-1991)
Editor-in-chief Vitaly Korotich at Ogonyok’s editorial office in Moscow.
Masterscriptie Geschiedenis van de Internationale Betrekkingen
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Name: Judith Jongeneel
Date: 10 January 2018
Student number: 10198504
Supervisor: Sudha Rajagopalan
Second evaluator: Rimko van der Maar
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Table of contents
Introduction ... 2
The changing international climate ... 3
Ogonyok and Vitaly Korotich ... 6
Research question and sources ... 11
1. Ogonyok and its editor-in-chief Vitaly Korotich... 15
1.1 Strategizing glasnost ... 15
1.2 The reader speaks out in Slovo chitatelya (‘Word of the reader’) ... 17
1.3 Changing Ogonyok’s content and style ... 20
2. Ogonyok in Soviet public discourse ... 27
2.1 Positivity about Ogonyok’s new character... 28
2.2 The conservative counter-offense ... 33
3. The image of Ogonyok in the United States ... 39
3.1 Ogonyok in the American newspapers The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times .. 39
3.2 The emergence of Korotich as a public figure and the personification of Ogonyok. ... 44
Conclusion ... 50
Bibliography ... 53
Primary sources ... 53
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Introduction
Cover of Ogonyok magazine (July 1991) No. 29.
It was July 1991, when Soviet magazine Ogonyok portrayed this house of cards on its cover, the cards resembling the different flags of the fifteen Soviet Republics. Together they represent the still standing Soviet Union, but – as is always the case with a house of cards – destined to collapse. Faced with
growing separatism, the Soviet Union experienced trouble to maintain its centralized government. In the following five months, all individual republics would secede from the union, before its formal dissolution on 26 December 1991. It was one of the many ways Ogonyok and other media signalled that times were changing. Many Soviet citizens increasingly voiced discontent with the quality of life they were having in their country. The introduction of Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost had profound effects on this change. Newspapers, magazines, radio and television enabled the changes that were started by the government. The control on the media was somewhat loosened and they started to voice the discontent
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of Soviet citizens. Ogonyok was an important magazine at the time. The weekly journal took a leading role in the new openness and was soon hailed as ‘the flagship magazine of glasnost’.1
Not only in the Soviet Union the climate was changing. The introduction of perestroika and
glasnost caused socialism to be rethought in both East and West. Schismatic issues of the past were
increasingly seen as irrelevant.2 Many historians have argued that this contributed to the transformation
of the international climate that was characterized by the tapering off of the Cold War.3 Tensions
between the United States and the Soviet Union were decreasing in the second half of the 1980s. The introduced openness in the Soviet Union was just one of the many factors that contributed to the transformation. Yet, the role of Soviet media to influence society outside the Soviet Union is
underestimated. Many historians have focused on how Soviet media influenced national developments, but also in the United States the absorption of glasnost in public discourse influenced the American image of the Soviet Union.4 In the United States, the new role for Soviet media was closely followed and
discussed in national media. Especially Ogonyok became renowned because of its new status. The magazine and its editor-in-chief Vitaly Korotich were widely discussed by other media and soon took prominent place in both Soviet and American public discourse.
The changing international climate
In the late 1980s, the transformation of the international system was not yet acknowledged as distinctive from other episodes in the Cold War. International security researcher Phil Williams concluded in 1987 that the United States and the Soviet Union have remained adversaries and that
détente never could become entente. The 1980s were just another episode in the Cold War, in which the
balance of power was fluctuating.5 Similar to Williams, no political scientist or historian saw the 1980s as
a clearly distinctive period, let alone that they considered that the Cold War was coming to end. Shortly after 1991, historian John Lewis Gaddis concluded that international theory had failed, and that a ‘scientific’ method in the study of international relations to forecast events is no better than older
1 Chris E. Ziegler, ‘Introduction to the Paperback edition’ (added in 1990), in: Chris E. Ziegler, Environmental Policy
in the USSR (1987) xi-xxv, xi.
2 Julian Cooper, ‘The Prospects for the Socialist Economy’, in: Walter Joyce, Hillel Ticktin et al., Gorbachev and
Gorbachevism (London 1989) pp. 64-70, 64 and 69.
3 Judy Marie Sylvest, Glasnost. The Pandora’s box of Gorbachev’s reforms (Montana 1999) 53 and 54.
4 Nick Lampert, ‘The Dilemmas of Glasnost’, in: Walter Joyce, Hillel Ticktin et al., Gorbachev and Gorbachevism (London 1989) pp. 48-63, 48, 58-60.
5 Phil Williams, ‘Soviet-American Relations’, Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science Vol. 36 (1987) 4, pp. 54-66, 54 and 55.
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methods based on analogy.6 However, after the end of the Cold War many theories arose. These
theories shed light on the understanding of certain dilemmas and present how decisions have
influenced society years and decades later.7 A widely supported theory about the end of the Cold War is
about the transformation of the international system in the second half of the 1980s.
The transformation of the international climate was set in motion after both superpowers had experienced the crisis of 1983, a period in which the threat of a nuclear war reached new heights and showed alarmingly many similarities with the Cuban Missile Crisis of twenty years earlier. It was a year of deteriorating relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.8 President Ronald Reagan
spoke about the Soviet Union as the ‘evil empire’ and started a political offensive.9 Feeling threatened
by the United States, the Soviet Union shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, mistaking the passenger jet for an American intelligence plane.10 An improvement of Cold War-relations seemed far from reality.
However, just five years President Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev came together in the Moscow Summit to finalise the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Both countries sought a rapprochement with each other. On the Red Square, students of the Moscow Technological Institute asked Reagan whether he still thought about the Soviet Union as the ‘evil empire’. ‘No’, answered Reagan, ‘I was talking about another time, another era’.11
Something drastically changed in those five years and created an international climate
characterized by the tapering off of the Cold War. Many scholars have attempted to explain the sudden change in Cold War-relations. An internationalising context, broader meaning and evolved
methodological approaches have led to an expanding and complicating historiography. Research fields have enlarged from customary subjects of ideology and diplomacy to human rights, media, literature, and an assortment of cultural, social, intellectual and economic approaches.12 How can we understand
the period and add relevant information in such a diversifying, dissecting and expanding
historiographical field? Historian Federico Romero argues that the diversifying field resulted in a looser
6 John Lewis Gaddis, ‘International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War’, International Security Vol. 17 (Winter 1992/93) 3, pp. 5-58, 56.
7 Jeremi Suri, ‘Conflict and Co-operation in the Cold War: New Directions in Contemporary Historical Research’, Journal of Contemporary History Vol. 46 (2011) 1, pp. 5-9, 6.
8 Raymond Garthoff, The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War (Washington 1994) 352.
9 Ronald Reagan, ‘Evil Empire’-speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida (8th of March 1983).
10 Jeremi Suri, ‘Explaining the End of the Cold War’, Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 4 (2002) 4, pp. 60-92, 68. 11 Garthoff, The Great Transition, 352.
12 Federico Romero, ‘Cold War historiography at the crossroads’, Cold War History Vol. 14 (02 October 2014) 4, pp. 685-703, 686.
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understanding of the Cold War, and advocates for a broad cultural understanding. ‘Are we still dealing with one Cold War or many’, asks Romero, ‘and how do they relate to each other?’.13
Historian Jeremi Suri explains the end of the Cold War by drawing attention to the events of 1983, the decisions made by leaders until 1986 and the subsequently transformation of the
international system that ended the Cold War by the end of 1991. According to Suri, all these events are related to each other and can be organised into a ‘pattern of concentric circles’, which form together a ‘pluricausal explanation’ to the end of the Cold War.14 The events of 1983 increased Soviet-American
tensions and marked a ‘significant fork in the road’ (the first circle). These events facilitated broad, long-term changes in which social, economic, cultural and political forces affected the decision-making processes of both governments (the second circle). The influence of old orthodoxies decreased and the support for change by pre-existing pressures increased. In the Soviet Union, Gorbachev’s ‘New Thinking’ expressed the increased support for change.15 In the United States, the second-term Reagan
administration became increasingly peace seeking.16 These developments ultimately transformed the
international system (the third circle), in which the decisions made in the first two circles could not be backtracked and paved the way to the end of the Cold War.17
The theory suggests that there were many factors that played a role in the end of the Cold War. It suggests that there were social, political and cultural developments that together characterized the tapering off of the Cold War. One of these developments that signalled that times were changing was the way the media worked. Ogonyok was one of the most important publications at the time in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev appointed Ogonyok as one of the few media to implement his new policies with poet and writer Vitaly Korotich as its editor-in-chief. Korotich made a whole new magazine of
Ogonyok and the circulation of the weekly magazine increased from one million in 1985 to almost five in
1991.1819 According to historian Stephen Lovell, Ogonyok carried out a ‘distinct social function’.20 The
magazine reached the ideals of the shestidesyatniki, the 1960s generation that formed liberal
13 Romero, Cold War historiography, 687. 14 Suri, Explaining the End, 60.
15 Archie Brown, New Thinking in Soviet Politics (1992) 12-13.
16 William D. Jackson, ‘Soviet Reassessment of Ronald Reagan, 1985-1988’, Political Science Quarterly Vol. 113 (1998) 4, pp. 617-644, 617. See also: Suri, Explaining the end, 70-71.
17 Jeremi Suri, Explaining the End, 61.
18 Alexei Yurchak, Eto bylo navsegda, poka ne konchilos’ (Princeton 2005) 32.
19 Yekaterina Krongauz, ‘Vigilyansky: V “Ogon’ke ya ponyal – narod nevezhevenen i neobrazovan’, RIA Novosti (12 November 2013). Website: https://ria.ru/media_Russia/20131112/976087751.html (consulted 12 September 2017).
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worldviews during the Krushchev Thaw, but had to hold back and adapt when the thaws were ended with Leonid Brezhnev’s installing.21 Researching Ogonyok will offer more insight into the dilemma of
explaining the end of the Cold War. It offers insight into a period of a transforming international climate that was caused by earlier decisions and played a part in influencing the end of the communist era.
Ogonyok and Vitaly Korotich
On the official website of Ogonyok is stated that ‘with his arrival [Korotich], the magazine turned 180 degrees’.22 The weekly magazine Ogonyok, before 1986 a typical ‘hairdresser magazine’ and primarily
read because of its crossword puzzle, changed into a popular magazine with a critical tone to politics, culture and society.23 Vitaly Korotich, a Ukrainian born Soviet journalist and writer, was in 1986
appointed by the Soviet government as editor-in-chief of Ogonyok to implement the measures determined by Gorbachev’s reforms. He exchanged Ogonyok’s ideological content for modern contemporary topics, such as the troubles with socialism, the problems in Soviet society, the market economy and mafia and presented once-forbidden topics on history and literature. It turned out to be a great success. He attracted a diverse and widespread audience that echoed Ogonyok’s call for
discussion.
Today Ogonyok still exists. With its origins in 1899 it is the oldest weekly magazine in
contemporary Russia and the former Soviet Union. Until 1917, Ogonyok was a cultural magazine that engaged in the discussion of literature and art. The magazine disappeared after the Russian revolution, but returned after the establishment of the Soviet Union. The magazine’s headquarters moved from Saint Petersburg to publishing house Gosizdat in Moscow and Mikhail Koltsov became the magazine’s editor-in-chief. Koltsov was a star reporter for multiple newspapers and a convinced communist who worked close together with the NKVD.24 He started with the publication of music scores, the
reproduction of paintings and implementation of photojournalism in Ogonyok. In 1938, Pravda
21 Lovell, Ogonek, 989.
22 Author unknown, ‘Izvestny zhurnalist Vitaly Korotich prazdnuyet yubiley’, Sputnik (26 May 2016). Website:
https://ru.sputnik-news.ee/events/20160526/1863129.html (consulted 13 September 2017).
23 Nataliya Rostova, ‘Ya sdelal, chto mog. Pust’ drugie sdelayut, chto mogut. Glavny redaktor zhurnala “Ogonyok” (1986-1991) Vitaly Korotich’, Republic (1 December 2009). Website:
https://republic.ru/russia/ya_sdelal_chto_mog_pust_drugie_sdelayut_chto_mogu-199802.xhtml (consulted 13 September 2017).
24 Jessica Werneke, ‘Photography in the Late Soviet Period: Ogonek, the SSOD, and Official Photo Exchanges’,
Vestnik: The Journal of Russian and Asian Studies (2015) p. 18. Website:
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Publishing House replaced Koltsov’s editorship. Koltsov was accused of espionage and fell victim of Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge.25 Pravda redesigned Ogonyok into an ideological magazine used for
propaganda purposes. The many illustrations and photos remained, despite the strict ideological guidelines for photojournalists.26
During the Khrushchev Thaw, the Communist Party slightly decreased the strict guidelines for journalists. Ogonyok published limited travelogues about foreign countries and provided information about world events and international cinema. In 1958, the magazine’s editor-in-chief Anatoly Sofronov received an official warning from the Central Committee Commission on Ideology, Culture and
International Party Relations for ‘serious shortcomings in the decoration of the magazine’.27 The flexible
understanding of guidelines was restrained and the anti-Western political content increased. American financial wealth was connected to the domination of workers and atomic bombs.28 Everyday life was
coming to the fore, without losing the socialist realist glorification of communist values and teleological orientation towards socialism. Determined personhood changed into everyday personhood.29
Korotich spent his early life in the era of Khrushchev Thaw in Kiev, the city where he was born in 1936. Korotich committed to Kiev Medical University and graduated in 1958. Between 1959 and 1966, he worked as a gynaecologist and cardiologist, before fully committing to writing and poetry. As a member of the Soviet Union of Writers he published fifteen books in his native language of Ukrainian.In the late 1970s, he became the head editor of magazine Vsevit, a Ukrainian periodical that translates foreign literary works.30 Korotich became the editor-in-chief of Ogonyok in 1986, but was forced to
resign in 1991 after the journalistic assembly stated he had ‘shown cowardice’.31 During the August
Coup of 1991, hard-line communists succeeded to take control of Gorbachev’s leadership. Afraid for reprisals from State Committee on the State of Emergency, Korotich decided to await the coup in the United States.32 Lovell argues that the defeat of the Putsch proved that Ogonyok had fostered social
25 The accusation of espionage came a few weeks after Koltsov’s publication about Stalin’s Great Terror, the political repressions in the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938. In the article, Koltsov criticised aspects of this large-scale purge of government officials and the Communist Party.
26 Jessica Werneke, ‘The Boundaries of Art: Soviet Photography from 1956 to 1970’ (Texas 2015) 84. 27 Werneke, Photography.
28 Sonja D. Schmid, ‘Shaping the Soviet Experience of the Atomic Age: Nuclear topics in Ogonyok¸ 1945-1965’, in: Dick van Lente, The Nuclear Age in Popular Media: A Transnational History, 1945–1965 (New York 2012), pp. 19-52, there 19-23.
29 Werneke, The Boundaries of Art, 152, 153 and 157.
30 Marshall Fine, ‘Poet provides a view of Soviet writers’, Lawrence Journal World (28 September 1976) p. 5. 31 Alexander Mosyakin, Strasti po Filonovu. Sokrovishcha, spasennie dlya Rossii (Saint Petersburg 2014). 32 The August Putsch or Coup was the attempt of hard-line members of the Communistic Party to take over Gorbachev’s leadership. After two days, the State Committee on the State of Emergency capitulated.
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change in the Soviet Union. With Korotich’s progressive editorship, Ogonyok became a forum for liberalists and spread their ideology all over the Soviet Union.33
Ogonyok soon became known as the leader in Gorbachev’s openness.34 Korotich replaced
photos of Lenin by modern Soviet art, photography and political montage. Because of Ogonyok’s ground-breaking articles, the letters sent to Ogonyok’s editorial office and the magazine’s circulation strongly increased. Ogonyok wrote about bribery, corruption, Stalin’s war crimes, the increasing suicide rate and drug trade, but also attacks towards the anti-Semitic beliefs of organisations as Pamyat.35
According to some scholars, Ogonyok did not only reflect the changing of Soviet society, it also ‘accelerated’ it.36 Progressive thinkers welcomed the direction of the magazine and echoed its call for
change. Scholars from the United States have tended to describe the call for change in the Soviet Union as ‘pro-American and pro-capitalist’37, while others more recently pleaded not to treat similar
movements as capitalist: ‘Indeed, like perestroika and glasnost, the 1989 revolutions took hold as movements to reform socialism, for “socialism with a human face,” not for capitalism’.38
Korotich’s personal beliefs and intentions with Ogonyok are an intriguing topic to study. Soviet government appointed Korotich as the editor-in-chief of Ogonyok to implement Gorbachev’s
perestroika, but it is not clear whether he fulfilled the government’s intentions. Orthodox thinker Yegor
Ligachev accused Alexander Yakovlev – chief of ideology who supposedly assigned Korotich – of undermining socialism by appointing anti-communist editors.3940 However, his memoirs tell that
Ligachev himself appointed Korotich as the editor-in-chief of Ogonyok. Ligachev was convinced of the editor’s capabilities after reading his book Litso nenavisti (‘The face of hatred’), a propagandistic publication which makes strong diatribes against American life and Zionists who according to the book
33 Lovell, Ogonek, 997
34 Felicity Barringer, ‘Moscow magazine is leader in openness’, The New York Times (22 March 1987). Website:
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/22/world/moscow-magazine-is-leader-in-new-openness.html?mcubz=0
(consulted 16 September 2017).
35 Cathy Porter, ‘Introduction’, in: Vitaly Korotich and Cathy Porter, The Best of Ogonyok (London 1990) pp. 6, 2-5.
36 Lovell, Ogonek, 989; Lev Gudkov and Boris Dubin, Literatura kak sotsialny institut (Moscow 1994) 332-333. 37 David Kotz and Fred Weir, Revolution from Above. The Demise of the Soviet System (London 1997)
38 Penny von Eschen, ‘Locating the Transnational in the Cold War’, Richard H. Immerman and Petra Goedde, The
Oxford Handbook of the Cold War (Oxford 2013) 458.
39 Richard Pipes, Alexander Yakovlev. The Man Whose Ideas Delivered Russia from Communism (Illinois 2015) 61, 64-65.
40 Alexander Yakovlev and Mikhail Gorbachev supposedly had a three-hour conversation in Canada, where they together planted the seeds for perestroika and glasnost’ and became instant friends. See: Allan Levine, ‘How a three-hour conversation at a Liberal cabinet minister's home triggered the collapse of the Soviet Union’, National Post (17 March 2013). Website: http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-walk-that-changed-the-world
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are conspiring for world domination.4142 Korotich confirms Ligachev’s account of the allocation, but says
it was a decision of all three men – Gorbachev, Yakovlev and Ligachyov – to assign him as editor-in-chief.43 Whether this information is correct is not clear. Korotich seems to recall a variety of accounts
over the allocation in different interviews.
The expressed ideas in Litso nenavisti stand in contrast with Korotich’s progressive editorship. His vision about American Zionists shows similarities with the ideas expressed in The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic late nineteenth-century fabricated text that describes a Jewish plan for
world domination.44 Korotich’s ideas can therefore be regarded not only as Zionist, but also as
anti-Semitic. During his editorship, Korotich printed many attacks against such views in Ogonyok. For example against the anti-Semitic convictions of Pamyat, a political party with strong orthodox and nationalist values. The magazine became one of the figureheads to oppose anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. Surprisingly, Korotich expressed his support for the book even after 1986 and reprinted it several times.45 An interviewer of The New Yorker describes Korotich fittingly: ‘Korotich has a selective memory:
[…] his account of an event may vary from month to month or from one interlocutor to another’.46
His conservative views about the United States did also not originate out of ignorance. Korotich travelled to Canada and the United States as early as the 1960s. Thanks to the detailed descriptions of his activities by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Korotich’s personal convictions of that time are evident. A declassified report about Korotich’s stay in Montreal, Canada, describes how Korotich met several Ukrainian émigrés and had conversations about Ukrainian politics, literary criticism and Ukrainian nationalism.47 It turns out that Korotich found connection with the ideals of Ukrainian
nationalists. The reports describe meetings of Korotich with Ukrainian nationalist émigrés Bohdan Panchuk and Marko Antonovich. The latter was a member of the Melnyk section, a moderate division of
41 Stephen Cohen and Yegor Ligachev, Inside Gorbachev’s Kremlin. The Memoirs of Yegor Ligachev (Boulder 1996) 95-97. See also: Kotz and Weir, Revolution from Above, 65.
42 Vladimir Shlapentokh, ‘The Changeable Soviet Image of America’, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Vol. 497 (1988) 1 pp.157-171, there 164 en 165.
43 Gibbs, Gorbachev’s Glasnost, 26-27.
44 Alexander Soldatov, ‘”Protokoly sionskikh mudretsov” priobschili k ugolovnomu delu’, Novaya Gazeta (28 November 2017).
45 Vitaly Korotich and Antony Gardner, ‘Interview: Vitalii Korotich: The Media under Gorbachev’, Journal of International Affairs Vol. 42 (1989) 2, pp. 357-362, 358.
46 John Newhouse, ‘Profiles [Vitaly Korotich]. Chronicling the Chaos’, The New Yorker (31 December 1990) pp. 38-39. See also: Gibbs, Gorbachev’s Glasnost, 110 (footnote 27).
47 CIA Electronic Reading Room, ‘Subject: Korotych Vitali, his stay in Montreal, Que.’, Aerodynamic Vol. 31 (Operations, 24 May 1965) 42, pp. 1-15. Released in 2007.
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the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).48 One of Korotich’s statements suggests that Korotich
might have been more radical than Panchuk and Antonovich: ‘Anyone who says that Moscow knows everything, that it managed to Russify everything, that nothing can be done, that person is a Bandera capitulator’.49 Korotich refers to Stepen Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist and proponent of an
independent Ukraine. In the 1940s, the OUN split into two sections: the moderate Melnyk section and more radical Bandera section. Bandera was assassinated by the KGB in 1959. 50
Shortly before his visit to Montreal, Korotich had a conversation with Ukrainian émigré Rostislav Chomiak51 in Toronto, where he referred to himself and his literary colleagues as ‘the boys’ and
‘nation-builders’ of Ukraine.52 The CIA notes that Korotich ‘said many of these things because he wanted to
impress Chomiak and win his complete confidence’.53 To define Korotich as a radical Ukrainian
nationalist might therefore be doubtful. In addition, the OUN source warned the CIA that Korotich ‘had betrayed his friends and therefore one should be very careful with him’.54 In 1966, Korotich became
Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the Union of Writers UkSSR, which made him no longer accepted by ‘the boys’. Ivan Svitlichny, Ukrainian literary critic and Soviet dissident to whom Korotich referred as a ‘good critic’55, did not want to be associated with Korotich anymore.56 Also later in his life, people became
disappointed in Korotich. Well-known Russian writer Viktor Nekrasov said that he lost his sympathy for Korotich after reading Litso nenavisti. He was of the opinion that Korotich’s views are ‘tendentious, if
48 The CIA used ‘various OUN wings in ideological warfare and covert actions against the Soviet Union’. The agency’s source was most likely as well a member of OUN. See: Per Anders Rudling, ‘The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right. The Case of VO Svoboda’, in: Ruth Wodak and John. E. Richardson, Analysing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text (New York 2013) pp. 228-255, 230.
49 Quote of Vitaly Korotich. See: CIA Electronic Reading Room, Subject: Korotych, 12.
50 Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History
of the KGB (New York 1999) 361-362.
51 Also known as Rostyk (Ross) Chomiak, who at that time was a reporter for the Calgary Herald but later committed as radio commentator to provide Ukrainians in the USSR with truthful news reports. See: Yaro Bihun, ‘Remembering Rostyk Chomiak’, The Ukrainian Weekly (16 January 2016). Website:
http://www.ukrweekly.com/uwwp/remembering-rostyk-chomiak/ (consulted 18 September 2017).
52 The CIA investigations to Korotich are all part of Project Aerodynamic, which granted support to a Ukrainian émigré political group. Soviet press attacked these collaborators often for their ‘bourgeois nationalist’ activities. See: CIA Electronic Reading Room, Aerodynamic Vol. 5 (Development and plans) 4.
53 CIA Electronic Reading Room, ‘Vitaliy Korotych aka Korotich and his
Contact With Rostislav Chomiak’, Aerodynamic Vol. 35 (Operations) 31, pp 1-4, 3. Released in 2007. 54 CIA Electronic Reading Room, Subject: Korotych, 7.
55 Ibidem, 12.
56 CIA Electronic Reading Room, ‘Memorandum for Record [by source AECASSOWARY/29]’, Aerodynamic Vol. 35 (Operations) 94 (16 February 1967) pp. 1-4, 1. Released in 2007.
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not lies’.57 Korotich’s worldviews seem to have changed quite often and abruptly. Being a proponent of
Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s to a strict conservative communist in the decades after and a liberal reformer in the second half of the 1980s, Korotich currently seems to have taken a pro-Russian attitude towards the conflict in Ukraine. Recently he said to believe that Crimea should be a Russian protectorate and independent from Ukraine.58 At the moment he lives in Moscow
and does not own a Ukrainian passport any longer.59
Korotich’s personal beliefs seem rather unpredictable. Over time, he seems to have surprised many acquaintances and colleagues with his perspectives. His intentions seem contradictory.
Nevertheless, he was a popular editor-in-chief and achieved Ogonyok’s greatest success of all times. After 1991, the magazine’s circulation quickly dropped. The novelty of rediscovered literature was wearing off. Because of their wide targeted audiences, the journals began to resemble almanacs rather than lively debates.60 Ogonyok attempted to redefine itself, but never again exceeded the limit of
one-hundred thousand copies per issue. One of the reasons why Western scholars often have forgotten and neglected the magazine’s social function in the period of perestroika, according to historian Stephen Lovell, and have preferred to research the largely read newspapers and monthly journals.61
Research question and sources
My purpose with this thesis is not to give another account of the ground-breaking articles Ogonyok published in the late 1980s. Neither is it to give another analysis of the reasons why the international climate changed and played a role in the end of the Cold War. The new flow of information made the upheaval in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries inevitable, but the emerging mass-media reached much further than the national borders of their countries.62 Historians have pleaded for
decades to approach the end of the Cold War from a transnational perspective. They advocated that civil society, businesses, labour unions and other non-governmental organisations directly interacted
57 Radio speech Viktor Nekrasov ‘Litso nenavisti Vitaliya Koroticha’, Radio station unknown (between 1983 and 1987). Published by Yegunets Almanac (2003) No. 13, pp. 172-174. Website:
http://nekrassov-viktor.com/Books/Nekrasov-Korotich.aspx (consulted 20 September 2017).
58 Radio interview ‘Bez durakov [Ezhenedel’naya programma Sergeya Korzuna. V gostyakh Vitaly Korotich]’, Radio
Moskva (25 April 2015).
59 Radio interview ‘Vitaly Korotich: “Nas Sovetskaya vlast’ vygnala von iz chelovechestva” [v programme Leonida Velehova]’, Radio Svoboda (21 February 2015).
60 Lovell, Ogonek, 989. 61 Ibidem, 989 and 1003.
62 Karen A. Frenkel, ‘The European community and information technology’, Communications of the ACM Vol. 33 (1990) 4, pp. 404-410, 410.
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across state boundaries and are not controlled by their national government.63 Yet, the contribution of
Soviet media to the transformation of Soviet-American relations in the late 1980s is mainly approached from the classical perspective, which focuses on the national influences of Soviet media on the Soviet Union.64
Direct transnational influences have been neglected. According to political scientist William D. Jackson, Gorbachev started a peace offensive against the second-term Reagan administration to
influence Western public opinion. His foreign policy aimed at ‘isolating American imperialism in the eyes of peaceloving world society’.65 Moreover, the new role of Soviet media as a result of glasnost was
broadly discussed in the United States and caused American citizens to form a particular view about the situation in the Soviet Union.66 Especially Ogonyok’s revelations and new character received much
attention. Only a few years before, Soviet-American relations seemed strained and ideals contradicted each other, but after the introduction of glasnost many people in both countries applauded the new direction Soviet media. It is my aim to analyse how the magazine’s new direction was interpreted in the two countries. How was Ogonyok perceived in the Soviet Union and the United States? Comparing
Ogonyok’s role in both countries will offer more insight into one of the larger changes of the
international climate in the late 1980s that caused the Cold War and communist era to end.
I will examine the research question by studying public discourse in both countries. Until the arrival of Gorbachev as Secretary General and the introduction of his reforms, public discourse in the Soviet Union was very limited. There were no political rallies and the content of literature, news, films and television was intensively checked and adjusted before published. The civic space that appeared to be present was controlled by the state. With the introduction of perestroika and glasnost in the Soviet Union, a limited form of public discourse came into existence. The tight grip was somewhat loosened, meaning that the content of media and other forums for public discourse were less controlled. Individual thoughts could easily flow into public forums, newspapers and television, causing open discussions and lively debates. In the United States, on the other hand, the climate was from a total different order than in the Soviet Union. In contrast to the new acquired space for public discourse in the Soviet Union, the space for public discourse in the United States was one of the greatest, if not the
63 Joseph S. Nye and Robert O. Keohane, ‘Transnational Relations and World Politics: An Introduction’,
International Organization Vol. 25 (1971) 3, pp. 329-349, 331.
64 Joseph Gibbs, Gorbachev’s Glasnost. The Soviet Media in the First Phase of Perestroika (Austin 1999) 3-4. 65 Jackson, Soviet Reassessment, 617, 618 and 622.
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leading example for the rest of the world.67 Analysing the perceptions in both countries may contribute
to a better understanding of the changing international climate.
The definition of the term ‘discourse’ is dependent on the theoretical orientation and background discipline of the researcher. The change that I analyse requires a social conception of discourse. Post-structuralist philosophers of the 1960s and 1970s, such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida have pleaded to treat discourse as a much broader and influential concept that is closely related to social entities and power relations.68 Foucault described discourse as the ‘practices that
systematically form the objects of which they speak'.69 According to his definition, discourse does not
just represent social entities, but it constructs social relations and is able to change a reality of society. The meaning of discourse is in this sense determined by dialogues and discussions, and structures a reality with a particular image of the world. It can be summarized as ‘systems of thoughts composed of ideas, attitudes, courses of action, beliefs and practices that systematically construct the subjects and the worlds of which they speak’.70 This understanding is crucial to draw any conclusions about how
Ogonyok reflected the changing public opinion in the Soviet Union, influenced public discourse in both
countries and contributed to improved Soviet-American relations.
In the first chapter, I will analyse the development of Ogonyok’s strategy and content under the editorship of Korotich from 1986 to 1991. According to the secondary literature, the defeat of the August Putsch was evidence that Ogonyok helped to foster social change. Analysing the magazine in the years between 1986 and 1991 will help to determine how Ogonyok could have contributed to this social change and the American image of the Soviet Union. Apart from its news-providing function, the
magazine dedicated to the discussion of literature and contained a readers column and in-depth articles about political, social and cultural topics. Besides examining the magazine’s content in the issues in the period of 1986 to 1991, I will use the secondary literature about Ogonyok to track this development. According to Lovell, Ogonyok made the liberal ideology of the shestidesyatniki accessible to the mass, which caused Soviet citizens to advocate for their needs and demands.71
In the second chapter, I will examine how the renewed image of Ogonyok was perceived in Soviet public discourse. In Literatura kak sotsialny institut (‘Literature as a social institution’), Russian
67 Carolyn Calloway-Thomas and John Luis Lucaites, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Sermonic Power of Public
Discourse (Tuscaloosa 1993) 88.
68 Katsue Akiba Reynolds, Discourse and Social Change. From "personal" to "political" (Honululu 1989) 18. 69 Michel Foucault, Archeology of Knowledge (New York 1972) 49.
70 Iara Lessa, ‘Discursive Struggles Within Social Welfare: Restaging Teen Motherhood’, The British Journal of Social
Work Vol. 36 (2006) 2, pp. 283-298, 285.
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sociologists Lev Gudkov and Boris Dubin take the journals as an example to demonstrate the growing ‘interest articulation’ in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s: the way Soviet citizens expressed their needs and frustration to the government.72 Ogonyok did not only reflect public discourse, it also affected it.
With its critical tone and sharp comments, it caused the broader public discourse to talk and write about
Ogonyok and its addressed topics. Topics that Ogonyok pointed out were re-discussed by other media.
Moreover, Ogonyok became discussed by other media as a symbol of the new era and the increasing division between the conservatives and liberalists.73 I will analyse media, such as newspapers, journals,
television or radio, but also public meetings, speeches and movies. Also, I will use the readers column of
Ogonyok, which functioned as a forum where readers could respond to topics in earlier issues of the
magazine.
In the last chapter, I will repeat the same analysis as in chapter two, but for the United States. I will analyse how American public discourse about Ogonyok was characterized and differed from the way it was perceived in the Soviet Union. This will offer insight into the American image of the Soviet Union and Ogonyok’s role in it. A variety of books were published outside the Soviet Union about Ogonyok’s ground-breaking articles and readers column and how the magazine tested the limits of glasnost.7475
Moreover, American newspapers were regularly reporting about Ogonyok’s revelations, in particular the daily newspapers The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. These newspapers were two of the most circulated newspapers in the United States and I will therefore focus mainly on these media. Also, Korotich became a prominent figure in the United States because of his vision with the magazine. He became a frequently interviewed guest by newspapers and television shows.76 His gained fame was due
to the success of the magazine. Gradually, Korotich became a public figure in the United States and he took over Ogonyok’s role as the figurehead of glasnost.77 I will therefore also analyse how he as a person
was perceived.
72 Gudkov and Dubin, Literatura; Lovell, Ogonek, 989.
73 Author unknown, ‘Liberal Policies of Gorbachev Face Stiff Opposition from Conservatives’, Jewish Telegraphic
Agency (28 February 1989) p. 3.
74 Vitaly Korotich and Cathy Porter, The Best of Ogonyok (London 1990); Christopher Cerf and Marina Albee, Small
Fires. Letters from the Soviet People to Ogonyok magazine. 1987-1990 (New York 1990); Irène Commeau-Rufin, Lettres des Profondeurs de I'URSS. Le Courrier de Lecteurs d'Ogonyok. 1987-1989 (Paris, 1989).
75 Korotich participated in the American publication by fulfilling a role as co-author and writing the introduction of the book. Nevertheless, the book is aimed at the American public and offers insight into the way Korotich
communicated Ogonyok’s role in the Soviet Union to the American public.
76 CIA Electronic Reading Room, ‘Special Memorandum. Leading Soviet Commentators and Midlevel Officials’,
General CIA Records (May 1987).
15
1. Ogonyok and its editor-in-chief Vitaly Korotich
Sociological research to the Soviet journals of the 1980s was for the first time executed by Russian sociologists Lev Gudkov and Boris Dubin. In Literatura kak sotsialny institut, they argue that the publication of newspapers, magazines and television broadcasting put Soviet social life into
‘acceleration’.78 Due to the new possibilities that glasnost offered, media became a resource for Soviet
citizens to express their needs and frustrations to the government. According to Gudkov and Dubin,
Ogonyok was one of the leading magazines in expressing this ‘interest articulation’.79 The magazine soon
became considered as one of the most progressive magazines in the country. Under the editorship of Korotich, the magazine became dedicated to large analyses of society, discussions about the
undemocratic character of political institutions and absence of parliamentary forms in political life. According to the secondary literature, Ogonyok became with its new character a zhurnal dlya
vsekh (‘magazine for everyone’). The magazine reached a whole new public in the Soviet Union and
mobilized people to express their needs and frustrations. With the role the magazine sought to play,
Ogonyok needed a broad support of the intelligentsia, the educated working class and thoughtful youth.
It needed a new social scene, one that dared to discuss about reforming the socialist state. Appealing to a wide and large audience was a difficult task and asked for a kind of specialism that is able to interfere in all economic, political and juridical discussions. Ogonyok needed staff and reporters with a scientific education who could analyse, put subjects into context and catch the attention of professional
scientists.80 In this chapter, I will outline how Korotich succeeded to change Ogonyok into the successful
magazine that was read by millions of people. The development will form the foundation for my analyses in the second and third chapter.
1.1 Strategizing glasnost
Ogonyok was striving for reforms within socialism, for ‘socialism with a human face’. It clung to the
pressing problems of the day, recognized reality and used a modern language and style. The new rules of perestroika and glasnost made people desire novelties that Ogonyok provided for.81 This change
actually developed more gradually than often is assumed. Lovell argues that there was no fixed political
78 Gudkov and Dubin, Literatura, 332-333. 79 Ibidem, 332-333.
80 Ibidem, 332 and 333. 81 Ibidem, 333 and 334.
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line visible in Ogonyok until 1989.82 In 1986, Ogonyok set itself the goal to be a truly national nardodny
(‘peoples’) magazine. Lenin was removed from the magazine’s masthead in 1987, but it still took some years before the magazine fully took the liberal side. The magazine grew out to unite all middlebrow people in the cause of modernisation and democratisation. It was the first time that a journal as
Ogonyok was fulfilling this kind of role. Before, newspapers usually performed a popularising function in
Soviet society and the thicker academic and institutional journals were known for initiating the intellectual debate.83
By 1990, internal tensions arose between the old shestidesyatniki and the younger generation of employees. The Law on the Press guaranteed the independency of the press from Soviet institutions and it released Ogonyok from the management of Pravda Publishing House. Being chained to Pravda,
Ogonyok had often complained about how its distribution was intentionally limited throughout the
Soviet Union by political motivations. After Korotich announced that the magazine’s staff would take over the management, the state seemed determined to punish its call for independence. It forced up the price of Ogonyok’s subscriptions and the Ministry of Finance was slow to arrange the magazine’s financial independency. One week after the editorial staff had threatened to sue the state, the magazine finally won the battle for independent registration. Korotich promised ‘the return of Ogonyok’s
convictions to its origins of a narodny zhurnal, to the concept of a weekly that speaks to a large part of the population’.84 However, a twist within Ogonyok’s staff made Korotich’s promise unreachable. The
shestidesyatniki stood behind Korotich’s statement, but the younger employees believed that the
magazine should provide a new strategy and image if it wanted to survive as an independent journal.85
By 1991, Ogonyok was forced into difficulties and its popularity decreased. Ogonyok’s editors were increasingly clinching with each other. The younger generation of employees were convinced that mass entertainment would maintain the magazine’s success in the future. Fourteen editors of Ogonyok demonstratively announced their resignation because of the internal twist. In addition, the magazine endured competition of other media that adapted their strategy to the new time of mass information. People were becoming tired of the endless political commentary and historical writings of the magazine. The novelty of rediscovered literature began to wane. It was evidence that Ogonyok needed to renew its image, despite the convictions of the shestdesyatniki. Korotich’s successor Lev Gushchin promised a
82 Lovell, Ogonek, 990.
83 Ibidem, 990.
84 Vitaly Korotich, ‘My podpishemsya tol’ko na svobodny “Ogonyok” – vot leytmotiv vashikh pisem. Chitatel’, Ty pobedil! “Ogonyok” – svoboden!’, Ogonyok (1990) 39, inside cover. See also: Lovell, Ogonek, 995.
17
‘highly professional and informative magazine that reports with honesty, without gossip and trash’.86
Despite his efforts, Gushchin did not succeed to relive the success of Korotich’s editorship. Ogonyok struggled hard to find new readers and the overall circulation quickly dropped to beneath one million.
1.2 The reader speaks out in Slovo chitatelya (‘Word of the reader’)
Once described as a dull magazine that was only read at hairdressers, Korotich exchanged Ogonyok’s content with modern and present-day topics.87 His predecessor Anatoly Sofronov attracted ‘devotees of
serialized detective novels, crossword-lovers and collectors of colour illustrations’.88 Korotich changed
the lay-out and started to implement the new rules of glasnost by discussing problems in Soviet society, the troubles with socialism and other once-forbidden topics. The most discussed feature of Ogonyok is the readers column slovo chitatelya (‘word of the reader’). After the arrival of Korotich, the readers column was soon acknowledged as the first national forum where individual opinions about social, cultural and political topics were expressed to society. The column was granted much prominence in the mobilizing role of Ogonyok and this vision has been supported ever since.89
The meaning of glasnost for the readers column was outstanding. Without the control of the Communist Party, the magazine could publish letters that before were censored. The possibility to make information accessible to the general public attracted people from all over the Soviet Union. At the beginning of 1986, just before Korotich’s editorship, Ogonyok received about twenty letters a day. By 1990, it received around two-hundred thousand a year. Readers wrote about everything, but mostly about needs and frustrations: the problems with socialism, market economy, criminality, prostitution and vagrancy and mafia. The problems they wrote about sometimes appeared to be simple, such as the shortages of smoked sausages in the Omsk Oblast and the long waiting lines for everyday groceries, but often reflected larger problems of the socialist system. Others expressed criticism towards greater political frustrations, such as the ongoing censorship and the falsification of history.90
86 Lev Gushchin, ‘Foreword’, Ogonyok (1992) 1, p. 2. See also: Lovell, Ogonek, 995-996.
87 Iina Kohonen, ‘The Space Race and Soviet Utopian Thinking 1’, The Sociological Review Vol. 57 (2009) 1, pp. 114-131, 122-123.
88 Feliks Medvedev, Tsena Prozreniya (Moscow 1990) 4. See also: Lovell, Ogonek, 990.
89 Cerf and Albee, Letters from the Soviet People, 7-9; Author unknown, ‘Censorship makes headlines in Ogonyok’,
Nature Vol. 329 (29 October 1987) 6142, p. 784. For later academic publications, see: Lovell, Ogonek, 991; Kotz and Weir, Revolution from Above, 65.
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In a letter dating from July 1988, a reader writes about the ‘surprising’ truth around Andrei Sakharov. The reader from Moscow refers to an article in Moskovskie Novosti (‘Moscow News’), which revealed all the lies told about the Russian physicist. Sakharov, who became well-known because of his inventions in the Soviet atomic bomb project, became a dissident when he realised about the political and moral implications of his work. In response to Sakharov’s dissidence and turn to activism, Soviet government attempted to denigrate Sakharov by telling lies about him and his family. The reader, who says to have found it ‘very unpleasant’ to read the book about Sakharov and his family, seems amazed that all what he believed in turns out to be a lie. ‘It turns out that Academician Sakharov is not
swimming in luxury from the money supplied by foreign intelligence, and his wife, Yelena Bonner, is not simply an amoral adventurist who married the academician for money.’91 The reader asks in his letter
for more information about the reasons why these lies were told. The letter is an example of how readers found out about the lies that were told by the Soviet government. For some, it was clear even before the introduction of glasnost that information was held back or that lies were told to denigrate certain people. For most others, the announcements were shocking, causing confusion and loss of the Soviet ideology.92
In another letter, Soviet academician Vitaly Goldansky shows his concerns about the ongoing censorship in the Soviet Union. In his letter, Goldansky writes about how the academic journals Nature and Science were censored. Nature was imported from Britain, but before when it reached the institutes and library shelves parts of the journal were carrying blacked-out entries. Science was reproduced in the Soviet Union under license, but pages about sensitive or offending articles were often removed
entirely.93 The letter shows how Goldansky tried to bring the issue to the attention of a larger audience.
He later argued that the extreme right-wing was to blame for the ongoing censorship, which sought to subvert perestroika.94 Ogonyok took a hard stance against this extreme right-wing. Despite Korotich’s
views of American Zionists and their Semitic character, the magazine often attacked the anti-Semitic views of nationalist organisation Pamyat. According to historian Vladimir Shlapentokh, the changing opinion about the subject symbolizes Korotich’s ‘radical turn to the left’ in those years.95
91 A. Yu. Shcherbakov, ‘Letter to the editor’ Ogonyok (1988) 28, pp. 4-5, 5.
92 Leon Aron, ‘Everything you think you know about the collapse of the Soviet Union is wrong’, Foreign Policy (1 July 2011) 187, pp. 64-70, 67 and 68.
93 Author unknown, Censorship, 784.
94 Hon. Tom Lantos of California in The House of Representatives, ‘The Congress must condemn the outrage of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union; Support House Concurrent Resolution 264’, Extensions of Remarks (22 February 1990) pp. 2456-2491, 2465.
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Korotich explained his policy for the readers column in a 1988 interview as follows: ‘Well, we have two aims: first of all we make a point of publishing purely controversial, problematic letters; secondly, we print letters from Stalinists, from people whom we consider dangerous'.96 Only from 1988
and 1989 onwards, anti-Stalinist letters would take prominent place in the readers column. A letter dating from January 1988 illustrates how Stalin’s repression and the falsification of history was approached in the readers column: ‘The new generation should know the truth about that, what their fathers and grandfathers lived through’, the reader starts. ‘Take for example the famine of 1933. […] Was that famine a fatal inevitability or is someone to blame, and could it have been avoided? […] Keeping silent about it is at least immoral. After all, the number of victims during the year 1933
surpasses all other victims of the Stalinist repressions.’97 The causes of the Holodomor, the famine in the
Ukrainian part of the Soviet Union in 1933, are currently still a subject of debate. Some claim that the famine was caused by the collectivization policies of Stalin, others claim that it was a deliberately attack on Ukrainian nationalism and to the prevent peasant uprisings.98 More publications on Stalin’s crimes
and the falsification of history appeared from 1989, after newspaper Pravda published an article in which an organ of the Communist Party admitted that the famine had been instigated by Stalin to force collectivization and break Ukrainian nationalism.99
The careful strategy Korotich handled in the readers column also appears from another interview. Korotich said in a 1989 interview to have slowly approached the point of printing critical pieces on contemporary Soviet policy, but that caution maintains necessary:
We have to create the appropriate atmosphere right now. […] So far we have only begun to change the atmosphere rather than the climate. There is no alternative: we cannot wage battle against these people to all throw them into prison. Above all we must increase the amount of information that is available to the public. In the old days, the public could only read
commentaries about Reagan’s speeches rather than the original texts. We have begun to change that.100
Despite the new rules of perestroika and glasnost, Korotich felt that his radical policy had to be
accompanied with caution. Letters critical on contemporary Soviet policy would only be published from 1990 and especially in the very last months before the union’s formal dissolution in December 1991.
96 John Murray, The Russian Press from Brezhnev to Yeltsin (Aldershot 1994) 176-177. 97 M. E. Galushko, ‘Letter to the editor’, Ogonyok (1988) 2, pp. 2-3, 2.
98 Taras Kuzio, Ukraine. Democratization, Corruption, and the New Russian Imperialism (Santa Barbara 2015) 17. 99 Cerf and Albee, Small Fires, 243.
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According to the secondary literature, Ogonyok was ‘the first magazine in the USSR to publish a regular, broad-based “Letters to the Editors” column’.101 It is often stated that Ogonyok was one of the
first Soviet magazines to implement a readers column, but this seems to be incorrect. In the 1920s, Vladimir Lenin was the first one to initiate the concept of a readers column in the Soviet Union. He used the so-called ‘village correspondents’ to create feedback for the leadership and urged journalists to ‘expose the unfit’ and ‘actual malefactors’ in society.102 In the 1950s and 1960s, the concept of a
reader’s (and viewer’s) column was re-established in mainstream journals when the Soviet Union entered the Thaw period. One example was the literary journal Novyi Mir (‘New World’), which regularly stirred a storm of controversy and generated agitated responses in the readers column.103 The
difference was that with glasnost, the relative form of openness was larger than ever before. It is true that during glasnost, the letters stirred a bigger storm of controversy than ever before, but the concept of a readers column was in the Soviet Union present for decades.
1.3 Changing Ogonyok’s content and style
Apart from the readers column, Ogonyok dedicated to the discussion of rediscovered literature, poems and to illustrated in-depth articles about cultural, social and political topics. Their radical content and critical tone were a successful formula that delivered Ogonyok in 1991 its highest circulation of all times. The degree of radicalism seems to have developed gradually during Korotich’s editorship. When an issue dating from 1986 is opened, the reader will find that a big part of its content is dedicated to the
discussion of the literature, art and poems and illustrated with ideological photos of everyday life. When an issue dating from the end of 1991 is opened, one will find a very different magazine. Literature and poems are still present next to a small amount of art, but the biggest part of the magazine’s illustrated articles covers the discussion of political and social topics. The photos with happy and smiling Soviet citizens appear to have been replaced by photos that express the crisis in which the Soviet Union was finding itself.
The changes that came along with the transition from Sofronov to Korotich were less sudden than often is assumed. Until 1986, Ogonyok was a dull magazine that for decades did not report about
101 Ibidem, 7.
102 Matthew E. Lenoe, ‘Letter-writing and the State. Reader correspondence with newspapers as a source for early Soviet history’, Cahiers du Monde Russe Vol. 40 (1999) 1-2, pp. 139-170, 159 (footnote 50).
103 Robert Legvold, ‘Recent Books: Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Republics: The Readers of Novyi Mir: Coming to Terms With the Stalinist Past’, Foreign Affairs Vol. 93 (2014) 1, pp. 201-202, 201
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any internal problems. No ships sank and no planes crashed. The magazine represented nobody. In the beginning of Korotich’s editorship, Ogonyok continued to portray ideological photos of Soviet life and largely covered reprints of literature and art. One of the first changes that Korotich applied was in September 1986, with the removal of the Order of Lenin from Ogonyok’s cover. His intentions were to make the magazine less official, but the removal stirred a storm of controversy. One of the opponents was the nationalist organisation Pamyat, known because of its fascist and anti-Semitic views. The organisation protested against the removal by a letter writing campaign to the Communist Party and Party officials.104 The removal of the Order of Lenin was the first of many collisions that would follow
between Korotich and Pamyat.
By the second half of 1988, Ogonyok had started to test the boundaries of glasnost. The magazine slowly rose to the point of publishing once-banned content. In the autumn of 1987, Ogonyok published articles on social irregularities in the country, such as prostitution and vagrancy, police brutality and domestic violence. Besides that, Ogonyok ran negative accounts on Joseph Stalin and Stalinism. These accounts were not per se considered daring, as Gorbachev had already condemned Stalin’s crimes.105 However, their different definition of the term ‘Stalinism’ was somewhat problematic.
Ogonyok used Stalinism as a synonym to describe the purges of the 1930s.106 Gorbachev defined
Stalinism as the collectivisation and rapid industrialisation of the Soviet Union something that praised. Scholars have stated that Ogonyok’s stance on Stalinism played an important role for the rehabilitation of some of Stalin’s victims, such as Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov and Fyodor Raskolnikov. Ogonyok published memoirs and letters addressed to Gorbachev, for example one written by Anna Mikhailovna Larina, Bukharin’s widow. According to historian Roy Medvedev, the letter and memoirs have
accelerated the debate on rehabilitation.107
Also on the area of literature Ogonyok started to publish some daring content. In December 1987, Ogonyok published one chapter of Doctor Zhivago, preceding the publication of the full text in the journal Novyj Mir in 1988.108 The book was banned in the Soviet Union for decades, as the Communist
Party considered the book as anti-Soviet. Boris Pasternak had not used the dominant style of socialist realism. He highlighted the individual and subtly criticised Stalinism and collectivisation. To the anger of
104 Felicity Barringer, ‘Russian nationalists test Gorbachev’, The New York Times (24 May 1984).
105 William J. Eaton, ‘Gorbachev Calls Stalin Crimes “Unforgivable”: But He Praises Decisions to Collectivize Farms and Push for Rapid, State-Run Industrialization’, The Los Angeles Times (3 November 1987).
106 Yitzhak M. Brudny, Reinventing Russia. Russian Nationalism and the Soviet State, 1953-1991 (Boston 2000) 217. 107 Roy Medvedev and Giulietto Chiesa, Time of Change. An Insider’s View of Russia’s Transformation (New York 1991) 146.
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the Communist Party, the book was published in 1957 in Italy and in the following year Pasternak was awarded with the Nobel Prize of Literature.109 Andrei Voznesensky, poet and one of Pasternak’s former
protégés, described the publication as ‘a very important step, you could say an historic one’.110 The
official line against semi-banned authors such as Pasternak changed. The new policy of glasnost allowed
Ogonyok to publish the works of Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam and other officially
disfavoured poets and writers. Although his revelations were considered daring, Korotich acknowledged there was a fierce hostility towards the new policy form. He handled his radical policy with caution.111
From mid-1988, criticism to the anti-Semitic views of nationalist organisation Pamyat became a recurring subject. Except the hard line that Ogonyok adopted against people with such views, Ogonyok attempted to rectify the historical image of Jews. In June 1988, Ogonyok published a criticising article about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The anti-Semitic text calls Jews ‘conspirators’, ‘secret agents’ and ‘mysterious villains’112, who want to destroy the state to achieve world domination. Ogonyok’s
reporters Vladimir Nosenko and Sergej Rogov explained the historical origin of the Protocols and call it a myth, which ‘instead of the historical truth, lined [people] with forgery that was uncovered many years ago’.113 Many articles about the anti-Semitic views of Pamyat would follow, to the anger of the
organisation’s members. Ogonyok attempted to demonstrate how the denial of anti-Semitism was responsible for such views. Similar to other forms of ‘evils’, such as prostitution, drug addiction and criminal activities, anti-Semitism in the USSR had simply been denied. ‘Anti-Semitism and its roots were passed over in silence or received an incorrect evaluation’.114 This caused Pamyat’s views to be deeply
rooted.
Until the end of the 1980s, the radicalism of Ogonyok seemed to have pointed mainly towards domestic issues and policy. Despite the new openness, there still rested censorship on foreign and military policy.115 Criticism towards the foreign policy was absent in Ogonyok, but some articles about
the Afghan War examined the Soviet Union’s occupation critically. In July 1988, Ogonyok published an open letter written by Soviet General Kim Tsagalov. Tsagalov, who had served as a military advisor to
109 Peter Finn and Petra Couvee, The Zhivago Affair. The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book (New York 2014) preface.
110 Philip Taubman, ‘Soviet writers reinstate Pasternak’ (12 January 1988), in: Robert Justin Goldstein, Political
censorship (London 2001) 403.
111 Murray, The Russian Press, 179 and 180.
112 Vladimir Nosenko and Sergej Rogov, ‘Ostorozhno: Provokatsiya! Komy nuzhny chernosotennye mify’, Ogonyok (1988) 23, pp. 6-7, 6.
113 Nosenko and Rogov, Ostorozhno, 6.
114 William Korey, Russian Antisemitism, Pamyat, and the Demonology of Zionism (Chur 1995) 119 and 120. 115 Murray, The Russian Press, 115-118.
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the Kabul regime, expressed criticism towards the occupation. He showed disappointment about the fact that many Soviet soldiers had lost their lives and argued that Soviet foreign policy was not succeeding in winning over the opposition.116 According to Tsagalov, the policy was instead causing
Islamic fundamentalism to grow.117 The letter received attention from all over the world. It is the only
example of Ogonyok’s discussed the foreign and military policy of the Soviet Union. Although the Afghan War was a much discussed topic, most articles were expressing criticism towards the absence of public assistance for war invalids.118
Similar to the readers column, Korotich was of the opinion that Ogonyok should write with caution and create an appropriate climate to pass through all debate and criticism. For the same reason, Korotich says not to have expressed any criticism of Lenin yet, but only of Stalin, Brezhnev and
Chernenko. ‘It’s a purely tactical move’, Korotich explained in a 1988 interview. ‘And if we begin criticizing Lenin, then we’ll end up destroying the whole temple, beginning with the foundations’.119
Korotich’s careful strategy also characterizes that his liberal worldviews were moderate. In the same interview, Korotich speaks out against dissident magazines such as Glasnost’, an unofficial publication led by Sergei Grigoryants. While he published daring content in Ogonyok that often embarrassed the government, Korotich stayed loyal to the Soviet system. He sought to reform socialism from within the system and considered every dissident to be a threat to the establishment.120
From the end of 1990, politically charged covers containing pessimistic photos or caricatures increasingly replaced the covers that resembled a fairy-tale everyday life. Short call-outs or questions were often added to the cover. In figure one, the cover of Ogonyok pictures a grenade. Parts of its iron shell are coloured with the different flags of the Soviet Republics. A big bow with the flag of the Soviet Union is knotted around the igniter, meaning that the union is seeking to prevent the ignition, blast and separation all republics. The meaning of the cover shows resemblance with the house of cards on the cover of July 1991, as described in the introduction, but a big question mark is still added to the photo of the decorated grenade. The cover poses the question that will be put to voters in the upcoming
referendum of 17 March 1991: ‘Do you consider necessary the preservation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics in which the rights and freedom
116 Mark Urban, War in Afghanistan (New York 1990) 248.
117 Andrew Bennett, Condemned to Repetition? The Rise, Fall, and Reprise of Soviet-Russian Military
Interventionism. 1973-1996 (Cambridge 1999) 277.
118 Korotich and Gardner, Interview, 360. 119 Murray, The Russian Press, 180.
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of an individual of any nationality will be fully guaranteed?’121 The three Baltic republics had just
declared themselves independent from the Soviet Union and other Soviet republics had declared in 1990 the supremacy of their laws over the laws of the Union.
Figure 1. Cover of Ogonyok magazine (1991) No. 12
