We're going to venture out on a limb here and suggest that for a while, Vyacheslav Kostikov was probably the most influential press secretary in the world.


How many times during the crises of the past two years did Kostikov roll out provocatively worded "official statements" over Itar-Tass that were quoted around the world as the opinion of President Boris Yeltsin? How many of those statements actually voiced the positions of Kostikov himself?


On a number of significance issues -- Gaidar's chances of staying in power, Russia's stance on Partnership for Peace, the battles with the old Congress -- we heard Kostikov talking and thought it was Yeltsin. Only later, when things went a different way, would we understand that those "official statements" were actually nothing more than Kostikov's interpretation of events.


Now that Kostikov's been fired, somebody else in the administration will fulfill Vyacheslav Vasilyevich's erstwhile role of setting off a mixture of probniye shary ("trial balloons") and utki ("red herrings") that infuriated Yeltsin's enemies, baffled his friends and kept the press guessing.


Meanwhile, it's not a bad time to reassess the state of the profession in general. In civilized countries, as they say, the press secretary is somewhat of a spokesman. In Russia, the press-sekretar' is usually too busy making policy to waste time presenting his boss' views. How many times have we been told by press secretaries Ya ne obshchayus' s pressoi ("I don't talk to the press")?


Then what, pray tell, do you do?


If we were optimists, we would see hope for improvement in the semi-official reason for Kostikov's retirement, voiced in the semi-official Izvestia: Ne spravilsya s zadachei organizatsii professional'noi press sluzhhby -- "He wasn't up to the task of organizing a professional press service."


But we have seen the wave of the future in a different document, a response to a colleague's request for an interview with State Duma speaker Ivan Rybkin from the Duma press service's recently created sektor po svyazam s pressoi ("the sector for relations with the press"). The document suggested that the correspondent address his questions to the sektor and it would tell him which Duma deputy he really needed to see.


The same letter assured him that this was not the creation of a byurokratichesky baryer, ("a bureaucratic barrier"), oh no. The sektor was merely trying to save journalists from their over-enterprising selves by heading off broad, general interviews that interest neither the Duma's leadership nor the reporter himself.


Policy-making-by-press-release of the kind practiced by Kostikov is out. Pre-emptive strikes by flacks are in. Happy reading.