Moscow News

Soviet Union

When Gennad Gerasimov left The Moscow News in 1986 to become the official press spokesman for Gorbachev, he was replaced by Yegor Yakovlev. In 1988 Gorbachev met English publisher Robert Maxwell and asked for his help in updating the newspaper. A small team of top Daily Mirror executive journalists was set up in Pushkin square and worked with Yakovlev creating a redesign and waiting for news of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in order to relaunch the newspaper with the headline “Coming home!” The newspaper began to break one taboo after another during the era of Gorbachev's reforms known as glasnost (openness) and perestroika (rebuilding)[2] and sales soared, often selling out within 15 minutes of publication. When Revel Barker, Mirror managing editor, addressed the Moscow News journalists on the concept of a free press, they accused him of “bringing about the downfall of the Soviet Socialist system”. During that time some communists were so infuriated at the paper's shocking revelations and criticism that they started referring to The Moscow News as "yellow press."