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Pravda's prewar editorial staff of 250 is now whittled to 50 or 60. It has correspondents with every branch of the Red Fleet and with every army commander in the field. (At least 50 Russian press correspondents have been killed at the fronts.) And when it wants to, Pravda can draw on the best of contemporary Russian writers: Gregory Riklin, Mikhail Sholokhov, Konstantin Simonov. The staff writer best known in the U.S. is the one who has most often criticized U.S. citizens: David Iosifovich Zaslavsky, author of Pravda's recent cracks at Wendell Willkie (TIME, Jan. 17), at William Randolph Hearst for "spilling poisoned ink," at the New York Times's Military Expert Hanson W. Baldwin as "admiral of an ink pool." Zaslavsky, dour and 65, is one of Russia's most prolific and popular writers.
The Kremlin Line. Izvestia (News) is the official Government organ, as such is scarcely distinguishable from Pravda. On a given day it will carry with Pravda, an identical Stalin prikaz and an identical svodka in the same type and positions. When there is no Stalin Order, Izvestia and Pravda fill their two left columns with a peredovitsa (leading editorial).
When there are long Government documents to record, Izvestia produces some extraordinary issues. Example: during the last meeting of the Supreme Soviet, Izvestia reported proceedings and the complete text of Viacheslav Molotov's speech in all 16 major languages of the Soviet Republics. Since it speaks for the Government,
Izvestia cannot be the vehicle for "unofficial" attacks on foreigners such as Zaslavsky's, or for such items as the Cairo "separate peace" rumor that recently perturbed the Allied world (TIME, Jan. 31). When Izvestia called the Vatican "pro-Fascist" (TIME, Feb. 14), it presumably spoke with the full weight of the Government. This is one of the few clues by which confused foreigners seeking to read the Stalin mind can decide what is "official" and what "unofficial" in the Soviet press. In general, U.S. correspondents say, Soviet editors are now free to report routine domestic news without consulting higher authority. But press pronouncements bearing on policy are still presumably carried by official direction.
The Front Line. Each army, each front, each division has its own newspaper. These are accompanied by numerous "fighting leaflets," ranging from pure instruction ("How to Fight German Tanks") to first-person narratives ("How I Destroyed Four Tanks").
Red Star sets the tone for all military papers. Red Navy and Stalin Hawk—for the air force—are closely modeled on it. Red Star's battle reports are the Soviet Union's most reliable and most colorful. Since all Russians get military training, all correspondents have military rank. Most of Red Star's are majors, who wear no insignia to distinguish them as newsmen. Red Star's star correspondent is greying Ilya Ehrenburg, 53, whose dispatches are frequently cabled to the U.S. Pravda and Izvestia also run his highly colored, hate-filled dispatches.