Press: A New and Better Pravda?

The official Soviet party newspaper plans to go independent

When Mikhail Gorbachev decided a year ago that the Communist Party daily Pravda needed a face-lift, he appointed Politburo ally and confidant Ivan Frolov, 61, to perform the surgery. Frolov quickly pledged that the conservative Soviet mouthpiece would strive to reflect the "pluralism of opinions" within the Communist Party. But the promised glasnost failed to materialize. Last month at an open party meeting, Pravda employees angrily demanded their editor in chief's resignation. Frolov, they fumed, was high- handed, rude and a sycophant of the worst order. Staff members charged that he muzzled editorial voices and blocked attempts to modernize the paper's...

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