Nezavisimaya Gazeta 14 January 1997 page 8.
by Vladimir Kobzev
"Aleksandr Lebed Now Has Own Newspaper"
The end of 1996 saw the birth of a new Russian
newspaper -- "Chest i Rodina" [Honor and the Motherland].
The founder of the publication is the Moscow branch of the eponymous public
movement, and the publisher is the movement itself. The newspaper
is unlikely to publish on a regular basis for the time being and its publication
will, perhaps, be timed for events important for the movement and its leader
Aleksandr Lebed.
The newspaper will have eight pages and publish
in 10,000 copies is rather evidence of the financial possibilities of the
former Security Council secretary's supporters than of the estimated
potential demand for the new publication. From direct and indirect
indications, the new newspaper will become a typical party publication
of the post-Soviet period. With the difference that Lebed has
created a movement and a party of a leaderist [vozhdistskiy] type.
As a result, three pages of the newspaper, out of the eight, carry Lebed's
report at the Third Conference of the Chest i Rodina movement, one
carries his picture and the other pages are taken up by "pro-Lebed"
political and economic analysis of the Russian situation, letters
from the general's supporters to their idol (that this is so is seen
from the tone of the missives) and a brief record of the general-led
movement's one-year-long existence.
With regard to the visuals, they consist of
three pictures of the general and three anti-government cartoons.
The quality of printing is typical of this sort of party publications.
The contents side of the material included in the publication reflects
to a certain extent the movement's political characterization of the movement
and its leader. Aleksandr Lebed's report contains analysis
of the situation in Russia, the general's own conclusions, the description
of his 133-days "experience of being in power" with eight points
proving his extreme usefulness for the state and the country's population,
proposals on vital problems of policy and economics stressing the
restoration of order, as well as the idea of a well-known politicians
on the creation of a "third road" party which is supposed
to merge with the Chest i Rodina movement in the capacity of a collective
member.
The remaining material gives a devastating
characterization of the socioeconomic and political situation in Russia.
If the first issue of the publication under review is any guide,
time and political vicissitudes have failed to alter either the movement,
which is the founder and publisher of the new publication, or its
leader. Despite all declarations on broadening the social base
of Chest i Rodina, the newspaper's material is clearly oriented toward
Lebed's supporters among the officer corps and retired officers who constitute
the movement's nucleus. Lebed's report does not contain a single
word of self-criticism. However, the issue under review may very
well prove untypical of further issues of the newspaper.