Yakovlev, Leading Perestroika Journalist, Dies

Yegor Yakovlev, who is often referred to as the founder and patriarch of perestroika-era and post-Soviet journalism, died Sunday in a Moscow hospital after a long illness, his family said. He was 75.

Yakovlev is best known for turning the Moskovskiye Novosti weekly from a propaganda tool into the leader of the liberal press and the mouthpiece of perestroika in the 1980s, breaking one taboo after another by addressing the Stalinist purges, criticizing the socialist economy and chastising Communist rule.

During his time as editor from 1986 to 1991, thousands of people would wait in long lines at Moscow newsstands on Wednesday mornings, hoping to get a copy of the latest issue.

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev praised Yakovlev on Monday for playing "a key role in the formation of journalism, democracy and television" and called his death "a heavy loss for the country."

"A man who did a lot for people and for the country, especially when the situation was not easy during the perestroika years, is gone," Gorbachev said.

"And to me, he was also a friend. We had warm, friendly ties for many years," he said.

Yakovlev was born in Moscow on March 14, 1930. He started a career in journalism as a reporter for Izvestia, Moskovskaya Pravda and other Moscow newspapers. In the early 1980s, he returned to Izvestia for a stint as its correspondent in Prague, and in 1986 he was appointed editor of Moskovskiye Novosti and deputy head of the board of the APN news agency, which was later renamed RIA-Novosti. Yakovlev's years with Moskovskiye Novosti were indisputably the highlight of his career, former colleagues and friends said.

"He was a very bright man who unmistakably expressed what people had been anticipating for years," said Alexei Pankin, opinion page editor of Izvestia and a friend of the Yakovlev family.

"Moskovskiye Novosti was nothing before Yakovlev revitalized it into the most-read newspaper," said Igor Yakovenko, head of the Union of Russian Journalists. "People saw that what they could only discuss in their kitchens was being written about and debated in the newspaper by the most knowledgeable and authoritative people of the time."

Yakovenko worked with Yakovlev at Obshchaya Gazeta, where Yakovlev served as editor from 1991 to 2002.

Yakovlev had a reputation as a tough, authoritarian editor, and colleagues parted ways with him more than once. Some such disagreements ended up being for the good of the country, Pankin said. For instance, a 1988 squabble involving Yakovlev's deputy, Vitaly Tretyakov, saw Tretyakov resign and go on to found Nezavisimaya Gazeta, another liberal newspaper.

In January 1991, Yakovlev famously ran a front-page headline about the bloody clashes in Lithuania's capital, Vilnius, that read: "Crimes of a Regime That Does Not Want to Leave the Scene." He resigned from the Communist Party shortly afterward to protest the Soviet military crackdown on the pro-independence demonstrators.

That same year, Yakovlev became president of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, a media freedom watchdog.

After the failure of the August 1991 coup, Yakovlev was appointed head of Commonwealth Television, a state television company, but was fired a year later for the station's coverage of a bloody ethnic conflict between North Ossetians and Ingush. North Ossetian leaders were infuriated by the television reports, which included interviews with Ingush militants, and then-President Boris Yeltsin promptly fired Yakovlev.

"This was perhaps the only shameful act of censorship from Yeltsin," Yakovenko said.

Yeltsin sacked Yakovlev despite being indebted to him, Yakovenko said. When Yeltsin lost his post as head of the Moscow Communist Party in 1988, Moskovskiye Novosti threw its support behind him, boosting his popularity and helping him climb to the top again soon.

In December 1991, Yakovlev moved to Obshchaya Gazeta, a respected liberal newspaper that closed quietly in 2002 after he sold it to a St. Petersburg magnate who attempted to reinvent it under the name Konservator.

Yakovlev served a last stint at Moskovskiye Novosti as the head of its advisory board in 2003. Yukos billionaire Leonid Nevzlin had bought the weekly and asked for his help.

In his last years, Yakovlev kept in touch his former associates from the perestroika and post-Soviet years. "At his birthday parties, I would always see Gorbachev, [Yabloko leader Grigory] Yavlinsky, and others," Pankin said.

A memorial service for Yakovlev will be held at noon Wednesday at the Central Clinical Hospital, and his remains will be cremated, Moskovskiye Novosti said. Yakovlev is survived by his wife, Irina; a daughter, Alexandra; and a son, Vladimir Yakovlev, who founded the Kommersant publishing house.