"It was a very high quality product, it compensated for the shortage of exact information about the United States," Robert McCarthy, head of the U.S. Information Services in Russia, said in a telephone interview. "But it was a product of a different era."
The last issue of Russian-language magazine features a grown-up woman on its front cover representing its growth from the little girl pictured on the first issue 38 year ago.
For most of its history, the monthly, whose circulation never surpassed 150,000, remained one of the scarce sources of knowledge about America allowed by the authorities in the Soviet Union. The Kremlin was in return allowed to circulate its English-language Soviet Life magazine in the States, which ceased publication several years ago.
Katya Misnik was one of those who had to queue for a copy of Amerika magazine ten years ago. When she was lucky to get hold of it she passed it on to friends after reading it, and when she was not, she would borrow a copy from friends.
"It was really hard to get a copy," Misnik said. "It was only sold at a limited number of kiosks and there were queues to get it."
Misnik said she used to hunt for the magazine because she "wanted to know about life in America and that was the only way to do it" at a time when foreign radio broadcasts in Russian were jammed 24 hours a day, while the official media did their best to make life outside Eastern Europe look like nothing short of hell.
But now that Radio Liberty, financed by the U.S. Congress, and the British Broadcasting Corporation are on the local airwaves, Misnik has long since stopped asking friends for a copy or handing hers around.
While the radio programs are still surviving in the abundant market of media services, local branches of the U.S.I.A., Information Services, or U.S.I.S., are replacing the traditional publications with locally-based high-tech information processing facilities.
The projects run by U.S.I.S. in Moscow include the American Center at the Library for Foreign Literature, offering its users computerized archives and a student advising center as well as a library of 4,000-5,000 published items.
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