''Kommersant'' (russian: Коммерсантъ, , ''The Businessman'' or Commerce Man, often shortened to
Ъ) is a nationally distributed daily newspaper published in
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
mostly devoted to politics and business. The TNS Media and NRS Russia certified July 2013 circulation of the daily was 120,000–130,000. It is owned by
Alisher Usmanov.
History
In 1989, with the onset of press freedom in Russia, ''Kommersant'' was founded under the ownership of businessman and publicist
Vladimir Yakovlev.
The first issue was released in January 1990.
It was modeled after Western
business journalism.
The newspaper's title is spelled in Russian with a terminal
hard sign
The letter Ъ (italics ) of the Cyrillic script is known as er golyam (ер голям – "big er") in the Bulgarian alphabet, as the hard sign (russian: твёрдый знак, tvjórdyj znak, , rue, твердый знак, tverdyj znak) in ...
(ъ) – a letter that is silent at the end of a word in modern Russian, and was thus largely abolished by the post-revolution
Russian spelling reform, in reference to a pre-Soviet newspaper of the same name active between 1909 and 1917.
This is played up in the Kommersant logo, which features a script hard sign at the end of somewhat more formal font. The newspaper also refers to itself or its redaction as "Ъ".
Founded as a
weekly newspaper
A weekly newspaper is a general-news or Current affairs (news format), current affairs publication that is issued once or twice a week in a wide variety broadsheet, magazine, and electronic publishing, digital formats. Similarly, a biweekly new ...
, it became popular among business and political elites.
It then became a daily newspaper in 1992.
It was owned by the businessman
Boris Berezovsky from 1999 until 2006, when he sold it to
Badri Patarkatsishvili.
In September 2006, it was sold to Alisher Usmanov.
In January 2005, ''Kommersant'' published a protest at a court ruling ordering it to publish a denial of a story about a crisis at
Alfa-Bank.
In 2008, ''
BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...
'' said ''Kommersant'' was one of Russia's leading liberal business broadsheets.
See also
* a Russian
news-radio station
References
External links
Kommersant, English version onlineBBC news reporting on Kommersant's protestPhoto gallery celebrating Kommersant's 15th anniversaryStory in the St. Petersburg Times about the sale of Kommersant"Kommersant"(1909–1917) digital archives in "Newspapers on the web and beyond"
the digital resource of the National Library of Russia
The National Library of Russia (NLR, russian: Российская национальная библиотека}), located in Saint Petersburg, is the first, and one of three national public libraries in Russia. The NLR is currently ranked amo ...
{{Authority control
Newspapers established in 1989
Russian-language newspapers published in Russia
Business newspapers
Mass media in Moscow