Documents / FOIA release
This is a JPRS translation, dated 6 November 1991 and held in a CIA release, of an article from the Moscow paper LITERATURNAYA GAZETA by correspondent Tatyana Fast. It tells how Riga journalists founded NEZAVISIMAYA BALTIYSKAYA GAZETA with backing from a business association, which then pressured and threatened them. The staff broke with the sponsor and relaunched as BALTIYSKAYA GAZETA. The article notes that the old title's new staff now writes about UFOs, nutrition and sex.
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## Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1991 Document 15 of 17 Page 3 away free at the barricades. It was then that we were suddenly jerked back by the sponsors: ''Do not get into politics!'' A little later, we heard something even more harsh: ''Change your position!'' 10. We replied: You are independent entrepreneurs; we are an independent publication. The agreement between us provided for each of us to maintain our sovereignty. When we brought this up, we got a sobering reminder: Those who pay are the ones who can afford to have an opinion. A little later, an article written by our partners appeared in the local press under the tale-telling title: 'A Sponsor's Wish Is the Law.' We were pointedly being shown our place. 11. We were being summoned to conferences and... taught how to write. Just like it had been done in the old times at party meetings. Even the terminology turned out to be similar: 'You are not holding the line,' 'You are helping their hand...'. We suddenly remembered the party censors, who usually did their job quietly, one can even say, in a delicate manner. If they removed materials from the issue, they tried, as a rule, to find a good reason: The censors cared about their reputation. The new masters were acting openly and unceremoniously. Their reputation was protected by money-in millions. Actually, not just money. When we, having gotten tired of squabbling, declared that we want to break the relationship and claimed our legal rights to the newspaper, the editorial offices were visited by... four Schwarzeneggers. Flexing their biceps and other muscles, the Schwarzeneggers explained that it was in our interests not to start a fight for the newspaper. The text ran more or less this way: 'Remember! The newspaper has been and will be ours. We can prove it to you by any means at our disposal.' 12. On 1 June 1991, we published the last issue of NEZAVISIMAYA BALTIYSKAYA GAZETA. The collective unanimously decided to break the contract relationship with the association. 13. The calamity made us sit down and do our own calculations. Are we really unable to survive without millionaires, we thought. Others somehow manage... If worse comes to worst, we will tighten our belts in the beginning. The results of the calculations left us horrified... The price of independence came to this (the data used is for Latvia). Paper costs 7,000 to 14,000 rubles [R] a ton at the commodity exchange (to produce a weekly, for instance, one needs 22 tons a month). The printing house charges 17 to 25 percent of the print run's list price. The Ministry of Communications-2.5 kopeks per copy for transportation. The Main Administration for the Distribution of Printed Materials of the USSR Ministry of Communications-20 to 25 percent of the list price of the retail part of the print run. The cost of computers: if we want our own, it costs R300,000-400,000; if we lease-R3,000-4,000 for typesetting and layout of one issue. If you
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 5 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.