Victor Afanasyev and Vladislav Starkov are both journalists, but they're unlikely ever to share a byline. As editor of the gray-tinged daily Pravda, Afanasyev, 66, has been less than eager to rush into print any of the startling revelations or investigative spadework that has become the hallmark of glasnost. On the other hand, Starkov, 50, oversees the weekly tabloid Argumenty i Fakty, whose sharp prose and readers' letters more often than not dwell on the changes sweeping the country, and helped make the paper the most widely read in the Soviet Union. Yet last week both men faced pressures far worse than those posed by deadlines: Afanasyev was summarily fired from his job and Starkov's resignation was demanded by high Kremlin officials.
As the official voice of the Communist Party, Pravda could hardly avoid addressing President Mikhail Gorbachev's ambitious agenda. But the paper did so unevenly, sometimes approving changes and at other times reflecting the views of the Politburo's conservative members. As for investigative journalism that turned up scandals from the past, Afanasyev gradually grew tired of exhumed skeletons. "To dig around in the dirty linen of our history," he told the daily Sovetskaya Rossiya in September, "merely serves to lead people away from the solution of our contemporary problems."
Afanasyev suffered a nasty embarrassment last month, when Pravda reprinted a lurid dispatch from an Italian newspaper claiming that reformist Supreme Soviet Deputy Boris Yeltsin boozed and shopped his way through a tour of the U.S. The paper was later forced to publish an apology, even though tapes subsequently broadcast over Soviet television appeared to show Yeltsin at least mildly intoxicated. But Afanasyev's most serious failure was one that has also undone many an editor in the West: falling circulation. Over the past four years, as Soviet news buffs switched to livelier journalistic fare, Pravda's readership slipped from 10 million to 5 million.
Afanasyev was dismissed under the guise of requesting a "transfer to scientific work." Named as his replacement was Ivan Frolov, 60, by no coincidence a close Gorbachev ally. Frolov has held academic and journalistic posts, in 1986 and 1987 as editor of the ideological journal Kommunist. His stewardship of that once stiffly orthodox publication was marked by the introduction of new voices, including some that have been prominent in the perestroika movement.
Starkov's troubles began at a meeting two weeks ago between Gorbachev and leading media representatives. The Soviet President has held other such sessions, but this time he did all the talking. During a two-hour finger- wagging lecture, Gorbachev delivered a blistering attack on liberal elements of the press, accusing them of undermining the influence of the Communist Party. He was particularly thin-skinned about press coverage of the so-called Interregional Group of Deputies, a liberal caucus in the Supreme Soviet, whose members voice harsh criticism of Gorbachev's leadership that makes its way into print. Said Gorbachev: "We are standing knee deep in an ocean of gasoline, and you throw in lighted matches."