Pravda

''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, 'Truth') is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most influential papers in the country with a circulation of 11 million. The newspaper began publication on 5 May 1912 in the Russian Empire but was already extant abroad in January 1911. It emerged as the leading government newspaper of the Soviet Union after the October Revolution. The newspaper was an organ of the Central Committee of the CPSU between 1912 and 1991.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ''Pravda'' was sold by the then Russian president Boris Yeltsin to a Greek business family in 1992, and the paper came under the control of their private company Pravda International. In 1996, there was an internal dispute between the owners of Pravda International and some of the ''Pravda'' journalists that led to ''Pravda'' splitting into different entities. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) acquired the ''Pravda'' paper, while some of the original Soviet ''Pravda'' journalists separated to form Russia's first online paper ''Pravda Online'' (now '' Pravda.ru''), which is not connected to the Communist Party. The ''Pravda'' paper is still run by the CPRF, whereas the online ''Pravda.ru'' is privately owned and has international editions published in Russian, English, French, and Portuguese. After a legal dispute between the rival parties, the Russian court of arbitration stipulated that both entities would be allowed to continue using the ''Pravda'' name.

Origins

Pre-revolutionary ''Pravda''

Though ''Pravda'' officially began publication on 5 May 1912 (22 April 1912 OS), the anniversary of Karl Marx's birth, its origins trace back to 1903 when it was founded in Moscow by a wealthy railway engineer, V.A. Kozhevnikov. ''Pravda'' had started publishing in the light of the Russian Revolution of 1905.White, James D. (April 1974).
The first Pravda and the Russian Marxist Tradition
. ''Soviet Studies'', Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 181–204. Accessed 6 October 2012. At the time when the paper was founded, the name "Pravda" already had a clear historical connotation, since the law code of the Medieval Kievan Rus' was known as '' Russkaya Pravda''; in this context, "Pravda" meant "Justice" rather than "Truth", "Russkaya Pravda" being "Russian Justice". This early law code had been rediscovered and published by 18th-century Russian scholars, and, in 1903, educated Russians with some knowledge of their country's history could have been expected to know the name.

During its earliest days, ''Pravda'' had no political orientation. Kozhevnikov started it as a journal of arts, literature and social life. Kozhevnikov was soon able to form up a team of young writers including A.A. Bogdanov, N.A Rozhkov, M.N Pokrovsky, I.I Skvortsov-Stepanov, P.P Rumyantsev and M.G. Lunts, who were active contributors on 'social life' section of ''Pravda''. Later, they became the editorial board of the journal, and, in the near future, also became the active members of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). Because of certain quarrels between Kozhevnikov and the editorial board, he had asked them to leave and the Menshevik faction of the RSDLP took over as the editorial board. But the relationship between them and Kozhevnikov was also a bitter one.

The Ukrainian political party Spilka, which was also a splinter group of the RSDLP, took over the journal as its organ. Leon Trotsky was invited to edit the paper in 1908, and the paper was moved to Vienna in 1909. By then, the editorial board of ''Pravda'' consisted of hard-line Bolsheviks who sidelined the Spilka leadership soon after it shifted to Vienna. Trotsky had introduced a tabloid format to the newspaper and distanced itself from the intra-party struggles inside the RSDLP. During those days, ''Pravda'' gained a large audience among Russian workers. By 1910, the Central Committee of the RSDLP suggested making ''Pravda'' its official organ.

At the sixth conference of the RSDLP held in Prague in January 1912, the Menshevik faction was expelled from the party. The party under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin decided to make ''Pravda'' its official party organ. The paper was shifted from Vienna to St. Petersburg and the first issue under Lenin's leadership was published on 5 May 1912 (22 April 1912 OS). It was the first time that ''Pravda'' was published as a legal political newspaper. The Central Committee of the RSDLP, workers and individuals such as Maxim Gorky provided financial help to the newspaper. The first issue published on 5 May cost two kopecks and had four pages. It had articles on economic issues, workers movement, and strikes, and also had two proletarian poems. M.E. Egorov was the first editor of St. Petersburg ''Pravda'' and Member of State Duma of the Russian Empire served as its publisher.Elwood, Carter Ralph. (June 1972)
Lenin and ''Pravda'', 1912–1914
. ''Slavic Review''. Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 355–380. Accessed 6 October 2012.

Egorov was not a real editor of ''Pravda'' but this position was pseudo in nature. As many as 42 editors had followed Egorov within a span of two years, till 1914. The main task of these editors was to go to jail whenever needed and to save the party from a huge fine. On the publishing side, the party had chosen only those individuals as publishers who were sitting members of Duma because they had parliamentary immunity. Initially, it had sold between 40,000 and 60,000 copies. With the outbreak of World War I, the paper was closed down by tsarist authorities in July 1914. Over the next three years, it changed its name eight times because of police harassment:
* ''Рабочая правда'' (''Rabochaya Pravda'', Worker's Truth)
* ''Северная правда'' (''Severnaya Pravda'' Northern Truth)
* ''За правду'' (''Za Pravdu'', For Truth)
* ''Пролетарская правда'' (''Proletarskaya Pravda'', Proletarian Truth)
* ''Путь правды'' (''Put' Pravdy'', The Way of Truth)
* ''Рабочий'' (''Rabochiy'', The Worker)
* ''Трудовая правда'' (''Trudovaya Pravda'', Labor's Truth)

During the 1917 Revolution

The abdication of Emperor Nicholas II during the February Revolution of 1917 allowed ''Pravda'' to reopen. The original editors of the newly revived ''Pravda'', Vyacheslav Molotov and Alexander Shlyapnikov, were opposed to the liberal Russian Provisional Government. However, when Lev Kamenev, Joseph Stalin and former Duma deputy Matvei Muranov returned from Siberian exile on 12 March, they took over the editorial board – starting from 15 March.
Under Kamenev's and Stalin's influence, ''Pravda'' took a conciliatory tone towards the Provisional Government – "insofar as it struggles against reaction or counter-revolution" – and called for a unification conference with the internationalist wing of the Mensheviks. On 14 March, Kamenev wrote in his first editorial:

On 15 March, he supported the war effort:

Soviet period

The offices of the newspaper were transferred to Moscow on 3 March 1918 when the Soviet capital was moved there. ''Pravda'' became an official publication, or "organ", of the ruling Soviet Communist Party. ''Pravda'' became the conduit for announcing official policy and policy changes and would remain so until 1991. Subscription to ''Pravda'' was mandatory for state run companies, the armed services and other organizations until 1989.

Other newspapers existed as organs of other state bodies. For example, ''Izvestia'', which covered foreign relations, was the organ of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, '' Trud'' was the organ of the state-controlled trade union movement, '' Bednota'' was distributed to the Red Army and rural peasants. Various derivatives of the name ''Pravda'' were used both for a number of national newspapers (''Komsomolskaya Pravda'' was the organ of the Komsomol organization, and '' Pionerskaya Pravda'' was the organ of the Young Pioneers), and for the regional Communist Party newspapers in many republics and provinces of the USSR, e.g. '' Kazakhstanskaya Pravda'' in Kazakhstan, '' Polyarnaya Pravda'' in Murmansk Oblast, '' Pravda Severa'' in Arkhangelsk Oblast, or '' Moskovskaya Pravda'' in the city of Moscow.

Shortly after the October 1917 Revolution, Nikolai Bukharin became the editor of ''Pravda''. Bukharin's apprenticeship for this position had occurred during the last months of his emigration/exile prior to his return to Russia in April 1917. These months from November 1916 until April 1917 were spent by Bukharin in New York City in the United States. In New York, Bukharin divided his time between the local libraries and his work for '' Novyj Mir'' (The New World) a Russian language newspaper serving the Russian speaking community of New York.Stephen F. Cohen, ''Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888–1938'', p. 43. Bukharin's involvement with ''Novyj Mir'' became deeper as time went by. Indeed, from January 1917 until April when he returned to Russia, Bukharin served as ''de facto'' editor of ''Novyj Mir''. In the period after the death of Lenin in 1924, ''Pravda'' was to form a power base for Bukharin, which helped him reinforce his reputation as a Marxist theoretician. Bukharin would continue to serve as editor of ''Pravda'' until he and Mikhail Tomsky were removed from their responsibilities at ''Pravda'' in February 1929 as part of their downfall as a result of their dispute with Joseph Stalin.

A number of places and things in the Soviet Union were named after ''Pravda''. Among them was the city of Pravdinsk in Gorky Oblast (the home of a paper mill producing much newsprint for ''Pravda'' and other national newspapers), and a number of streets and collective farms.

As the names of the main communist newspaper and the main Soviet newspaper, ''Pravda'' and ''Izvestia'', meant "the truth" and "the news" respectively, a popular saying was "there's no news in Pravda and no truth in Izvestia".Overholser, Geneva. (12 May 1987).
The Editorial Notebook; Dear Pravda
''New York Times''. Accessed 6 October 2012. Though not highly appreciated as an objective and unbiased news source, ''Pravda'' was regarded – both by Soviet citizens and by the outside world – as a government mouthpiece and therefore a reliable reflection of the Soviet government's positions on various issues. The publication of an article in ''Pravda'' could be taken as indication of a change in Soviet policy or the result of a power struggle in the Soviet leadership, and Western Sovietologists were regularly reading ''Pravda'' and paying attention to the most minute details and nuances.

Post-Soviet period

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union ''Pravda'' was sold by Russian President Boris Yeltsin to a Greek business family – the Giannikoses – in 1992, and the paper came under the control of their private company Pravda International.

In 1996, there was an internal dispute between the owners of Pravda International and some of the ''Pravda'' journalists which led to ''Pravda'' splitting into different entities. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation acquired the ''Pravda'' paper, while some of the original ''Pravda'' journalists separated to form Russia's first online paper (and the first online English paper) '' Pravda.ru'', which is not connected to the Communist Party, but is run by journalists associated with the defunct Soviet Pravda. After a legal dispute between the rival parties, the Russian court of arbitration stipulated that both entities would be allowed to continue using the ''Pravda'' name. The ''Pravda'' paper is today run by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, whereas the online ''Pravda.ru'' is privately owned and has international editions published in Russian, English, French and Portuguese.

''Pravda'' was a daily newspaper during the Soviet era but nowadays it is published three times a week, and its readership is largely online where it has a presence. ''Pravda'' still operates from the same headquarters at Pravda Street in Moscow from where journalists used to work on ''Pravda'' during the Soviet era. It operates under the leadership of journalist Boris Komotsky, who is also a member of the Russian State Duma.

On 5 May 2012, ''Pravda'' marked its centenary, with a grand celebration at the Trade Unions house organised by the Communist Party. The gala was attended by the former and current employees of the newspaper, its readers and party members, representatives of other communist media organisations. Gennady Zyuganov made a speech, and congratulatory messages were received from Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko.

McCain controversy

In 2013, after Russian President Vladimir Putin published an op-ed in ''The New York Times'' in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, US senator John McCain announced that he would publish a response article in ''Pravda'', referring to the newspaper owned by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. McCain, however, eventually published his op-ed in ''Pravda.ru''. This caused protests from the editor of communist ''Pravda'' Boris Komotsky and a response from the editor of ''Pravda.ru'' Dmitry Sudakov: Komotsky claimed that "there is only one ''Pravda'' in Russia, it is the organ of the Communist Party, and we have heard nothing about the intentions of the Republican senator" and dismissed ''Pravda.ru'' as an "Oklahoma-City-Pravda", while Sudakov derided Komotsky, claiming that "the circulation of the Communist Party ''Pravda'' is like a factory newspaper of AvtoVAZ from the Soviet times". McCain later attempted to publish his op-ed in the Communist ''Pravda'' as well, but the paper refused to publish it "because it was not aligned to the political positions of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation".

Editors-in-chief

The editorship of ''Pravda'' during its early years was collective and constantly changing; only the more important figures are listed here.

* Joseph Stalin, Yakov Sverdlov, Miron Chernomazov, Lev Kamenev, Vyacheslav Molotov (1912–1914)
* ''Publication suspended by order of the Bureau of Censorship'' (1914–1917)
* Vyacheslav Molotov, Alexander Shliapnikov, Konstantin Eremeev, Mikhail Kalinin (5–13 March 1917)
* Joseph Stalin, Matvei Muranov, Lev Kamenev (13 March – 4 April 1917)
* Vladimir Lenin, Grigory Zinoviev, Joseph Stalin, Matvei Muranov, Lev Kamenev (4 April – 5 July 1917)
* Yakov Sverdlov and others (6 July – 9 December 1917)
* Nikolai Bukharin (10 December 1917 – 23 February 1918)
* ''Unknown'' (24 February – July 1918)
* Nikolai Bukharin (July 1918 – October 1928; nominally until April 1929)
* Harald Krumin (1929–1930)
* Maximilian Saveliev (1930)
* Lev Mekhlis (1930–1937)
* Alexander Poskrebyshev (1937–1940)
* Pyotr Pospelov (1940–1949)
* Mikhail Suslov (1940–1951)
* Leonid Ilyichev (1951–1953)
* Dmitri Shepilov (1953–1956)
* Pavel Satyukov (1956–1964)
* Aleksei Rumyantsev (1964–1965)
* Mikhail Zimyanin (1965–1976)
* Viktor Afanasyev (1976–1989)
* Ivan Frolov (1989–1991)
* Gennadiy Seleznyov (1991–1993)
* Viktor Linnik (1993–1994)
* Aleksander Ilyin (1994–2003)
* Valentina Nikiforova (2003–2005; acting)
* Valentin Shurchanov (2005–2009)
* Boris Komotsky (2009–present)

Similar newspapers in current communist countries

* ''People's Daily'' – People's Republic of China, official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party;
* '' Rodong Sinmun'' – North Korea, official newspaper of the Workers' Party of Korea;
* ''Granma'' – Cuba, official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba;
* ''Nhân Dân'' – Vietnam, official newspaper of the Communist Party of Vietnam;
* '' Pasaxon'' – Laos, official newspaper of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party;

See also

* Central newspapers of the Soviet Union
* Eastern Bloc information dissemination
* Freedom of the press in Russia
* '' Iskra''
* ''Izvestia''
* '' Kommunist''
* '' Kommunistka''
* ''Komsomolskaya Pravda''
* '' Krasnaya Zvezda''
* Mass media in Russia
* People's correspondent
* Vitali Korionov
* '' Völkischer Beobachter''
* '' Zreniye''

Notes and references

Further reading

* Brooks, Jeffrey. ''Thank You, Comrade Stalin!: Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War'' (Princeton Up, 2001) on the language of ''Pravda'' and ''Izvestia''
* Cookson, Matthew (11 October 2003)
The spark that lit a revolution
. ''Socialist Worker'', p. 7.
* Merrill, John C. and Harold A. Fisher. ''The world's great dailies: profiles of fifty newspapers'' (1980) pp 242–49
* Pöppel, Ludmila. "The rhetoric of Pravda editorials: A diachronic study of a political genre." (Stockholm U. 2007)
online

External links

Official website



Archives
of ''Pravda'' (1952–1993) via .

Archives
of ''Pravda'' (1912–2024) via East View Global Press Archive.

"Pravda" digital archives in "Newspapers on the web and beyond"
the digital resource of the National Library of Russia.

Archive of ''Pravda''
(1918–1991)

{{Authority control

1908 establishments in the Russian Empire
Communist Party of the Russian Federation
Eastern Bloc mass media
Newspapers established in 1908
Propaganda in the Soviet Union
Propaganda newspapers and magazines