The publisher did not come out to talk to us. He sent two of his associates to explain that the publishing house had been reorganized and there was no place for our magazine anymore. We were being thrown out. “Personnel cuts” was the excuse, but nobody believed it. Sure enough, a few hours later the publisher announced that Itogi would continue to come out. It has a whole new staff and a new editor.
We knew this would happen. The new, sanctioned Itogi team–whom we nicknamed “The Strikebreakers” –had been training for a few weeks before they decided they were ready. They were no strangers. Our publisher, Dmitry Biryukov, who once backed us but recently has curried favor with the Kremlin, recruited them from his daily paper, Sevodnya, a few weeks before he closed it. They worked two floors above us, using our format and design. It’s impossible to hide an operation like this. We shared some of the equipment and the computer network, and every now and then we would come upon a sketch, a list of new staffers, a perfectly recognizable laid-out dummy page. It looked exactly like our page except we hadn’t produced it.
We knew our fate was sealed as soon as the Kremlin finally silenced NTV, the only independent national TV channel in Russia. After a year of attacks, the government’s surrogates finally took it over. NTV, as well as Itogi and Sevodnya, all belonged to the same media conglomerate. It was run by Vladimir Gusinsky, a tycoon whom the Kremlin regards as its worst enemy. His media incurred the government’s wrath by not supporting Vladimir Putin for president, criticizing the war in Chechnya and resisting the drive to stamp out diversity of opinion.
We created Itogi, Russia’s first news magazine, six years ago. It was just the two of us at the beginning, Editor in Chief Sergei Parkhomenko and myself. We were sitting in a little room in Gusinsky’s office building inventing a magazine. We knew NEWSWEEK might be interested, so we tried a similar format. (NEWSWEEK pulled out of its partnership with Itogi as soon as we were fired.) We picked the journalists we liked and launched Itogi in March 1996. After a few months we had our first scoop, reporting that Boris Yeltsin would undergo heart surgery. Soon Itogi was a profitable and well-known magazine.
When the Kremlin began its campaign against NTV, we sympathized with our television colleagues and wrote about their ordeal. The Kremlin wanted NTV, we thought, because it was a powerful dissenting voice (and pictures!) that reached 100 million people. Having a circulation of 85,000, we didn’t worry. Why would the Kremlin care about the handful of liberal intellectuals who read us? But our publisher, Biryukov, who once was Gusinsky’s junior partner, turned against him as the political winds shifted. Soon a third partner appeared. Gusinsky’s creditor Gazprom got a share of his publishing empire. Biryukov joined ranks with Gazprom and eagerly eradicated the last remains of Gusinsky’s media empire, including our magazine.
We suddenly found ourselves making news instead of covering it. Herds of correspondents, Russian and foreign, gathered outside our building to cover the Itogi lockout. A couple of independent newspapers offered space on their pages so that at least some of our reporters could have their stories published. Radio Ekho Moskvy, one of the last survivors of Gusinsky’s media group, invited us to do a radio version of Itogi.
But the Kremlin already appears to be preparing a similar takeover of Radio Ekho Moskvy. Some Russians don’t like this assault on the free press, but the majority is indifferent. The powerful democratic drive that changed Russia 10 years ago has faded, and Putin will get away with further crackdowns if he needs to. Two weeks ago we ran a letter to our readers, signed by all our staffers, warning of a possible takeover. We said that any subsequent issues we didn’t put out ourselves would be “fakes.” The headline read: ITOGI IS WHEREVER WE ARE. But even though we hope to start a new, independent magazine, we don’t know where we’ll end up. I’m afraid the government will interfere. Right now all we have is a radio version of Itogi. Boris Zhukov will have to turn his story into a radio script. But we can’t use photographs on the radio.
