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A few other journals are also being snatched off the newsstands as soon as they appear. Probably the most sought-after paper in the capital is the provocative Moscow News, which was the first Soviet publication to run the full story of Mathias Rust's Red Square landing. Readers sometimes buy the paper, which is primarily intended for foreigners, for ten to 20 times the official cost of 10 kopecks (16 cents). Ogonyok, which two years ago was largely unread, now sells out all 1.5 million issues every week. Under the editorship of Vitaly Korotich, the magazine has published a 1939 testament from an exiled Bolshevik denouncing Stalin as "the real enemy of the nation, and the organizer of famine and fake trials." It also sent a young reporter to Afghanistan to write candid accounts of the increasingly unpopular war.
The new policy of glasnost, though, is breeding confusion among editors, who now must decide themselves what to print. In July, Gorbachev warned Soviet journalists that openness and democracy "do not mean permissiveness." He seemed to be defining glasnost's limits when he told them that any attempt to advocate economic and cultural reforms "beyond socialism" will be censured. In fact, editors know that many subjects remain strictly taboo, such as the private lives of top party officials or criticism of Soviet arms-control proposals.
Freedom of the press as defined in the West is still a foreign notion in the Soviet Union. Rather, discussions among Soviet journalists about a free press concentrate on how much editorial independence is needed to help Gorbachev in his efforts to modernize the economy and revitalize the country. Glasnost, Soviet experts note, was not intended to mean freedom of information for information's sake.
The policy has also led to squabbles within the official press. Last month, for example, Molodaya Gvardiya (Young Guard) attacked Ogonyok and Sovietskaya Kultura (Soviet Culture) for their liberal leanings. The two journals shot back with equally harsh words for Molodaya Gvardiya's out-of-date views. Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper, intervened with a commentary calling the articles "rude" and a warning that scores should not be settled in print.
Despite the well-publicized efforts of a few pioneering journals, most Soviet reporters are quite cautious. Pravda, possibly because it is the party's official voice, is still timid and dreary. Provincial editors remain largely untouched by glasnost, rarely daring to emulate the investigative journalism of papers such as Izvestia.
The paper's ebullient journalists sometimes seem to get a little ahead of their sources. At a recent press conference, an Izvestia reporter rose to challenge a Deputy Foreign Minister's comment that there had been an increase in emigration for the purpose of bringing together families. Why, asked the reporter, are more of these families "not being reunited on Soviet territory instead of abroad?" Grumbled an abashed minister: "I would have thought we could expect a more convenient question from a representative of Izvestia."