Media Titans' Lasting Legacy

In the space of just 10 days this month the Russian media community was shaken by the loss of four of its leading lights. Semyon Levin, the well-known television graphic designer, died on Sept. 11. Yury Zapol, head of Video International, passed away two days later. On Sept. 18, Yegor Yakovlev, best known as the editor of the newspaper Moskovskiye Novosti during the perestroika era, died in a hospital after a long illness, and then show business producer Yury Aizenshpis died on Sept. 21. The many obituaries rightly hailed each of these men as the founding father of an entire sphere of the media industry.

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So much has been written and said during the last week about Yakovlev that there's no need to comment further here about his important contribution to the cause of free speech. Even young journalists, who never had the chance to read Moskovskiye Novosti during its heyday, say the newspaper has been instrumental to their professional training. It's less well known that in the post-Soviet era Yakovlev re-evaluated much of what he had accomplished during perestroika. "We were promoting the idea of a free market, though we had no idea what that was," he once said to me. That's a fairly harsh admission from a man who did so much to shape public opinion during those revolutionary years. Following the collapse of Soviet Union, Yakovlev became close friends with Mikhail Gorbachev. During the last years of perestroika Yakovlev had blasted the Soviet president's indecisiveness, backing the radical Boris Yeltsin instead. His next paper, Obshchaya Gazeta, was one of the few democratic publications that did not support the dissolution of the Congress of People's Deputies in 1993 or Yeltsin's bid for re-election in 1996.

The fortunes of Video International, on the other hand, took off after Yeltsin's victory in 1996. Yeltsin handsomely rewarded the people who had helped him to win a second term. The story of Video International provides a vivid example of how public resources were used to benefit a single, privately owned company, though criticism has tended to focus on Mikhail Lesin, a founder of the company who went on to become press minister. Today, Video International accounts for some 60 to 70 percent of all the advertising on Russian television. Even those who are concerned about the Video International's near-monopoly admit that the company is efficient and professional. No one at this point is pushing for an immediate righting of past wrongs, since this would probably have catastrophic consequences for the industry. Video International is a kind of conformist Yukos.

In the Soviet era Aizenshpis served 17 years in prison for "economic crimes." After his release during perestroika, he got involved in music promotion. His greatest success was the rock group Kino, whose song "My Zhdyom Peremen," or "We Expect Changes," became an anthem for young people at the time. The group's lead singer, Viktor Tsoi, who died in a car accident in 1990, remains a cult figure to this day. In the post-Soviet era, Aizenshpis was a driving force in Russian pop music. He moved pop beyond entertainment outlets aimed specifically at young people and made it a staple of national television channels.

Last but not least, Levin was responsible for turning graphic design into a full-fledged part of the television business, and increasingly of the press as well. The logo he designed for NTV, with its green ball, has become a classic.

The legacy left to the media industry by these four giants includes frustrated idealism, a company that got its start in dubious circumstances and became a market leader, the assault of glamour, and high art. Do we expect changes?

Alexei Pankin is opinion page editor at Izvestia.