Pravda

Soviet period

The offices of the newspaper were transferred to Moscow on 3 March 1918 when the Soviet capital was moved there. Pravda became an official publication, or "organ", of the ruling Soviet Communist Party. Pravda became the conduit for announcing official policy and policy changes and would remain so until 1991. Subscription to Pravda was mandatory for state run companies, the armed services and other organizations until 1989.

Other newspapers existed as organs of other state bodies. For example, Izvestia, which covered foreign relations, was the organ of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, Trud was the organ of the state-controlled trade union movement, Bednota was distributed to the Red Army and rural peasants. Various derivatives of the name Pravda were used both for a number of national newspapers (Komsomolskaya Pravda was the organ of the Komsomol organization, and Pionerskaya Pravda was the organ of the Young Pioneers), and for the regional Communist Party newspapers in many republics and provinces of the USSR, e.g. Kazakhstanskaya Pravda in Kazakhstan, Polyarnaya Pravda in Murmansk Oblast, Pravda Severa in Arkhangelsk Oblast, or Moskovskaya Pravda in the city of Moscow.

Shortly after the October 1917 Revolution, Nikolai Bukharin became the editor of Pravda. Bukharin's apprenticeship for this position had occurred during the last months of his emigration/exile prior to his return to Russia in April 1917. These months from November 1916 until April 1917 were spent by Bukharin in New York City in the United States. In New York, Bukharin divided his time between the local libraries and his work for Novyj Mir (The New World) a Russian language newspaper serving the Russian speaking community of New York. Bukharin's involvement with Novyj Mir became deeper as time went by. Indeed, from January 1917 until April when he returned to Russia, Bukharin served as de facto editor of Novyj Mir. In the period after the death of Lenin in 1924, Pravda was to form a power base for Bukharin, which helped him reinforce his reputation as a Marxist theoretician. Bukharin would continue to serve as editor of Pravda until he and Mikhail Tomsky were removed from their responsibilities at Pravda in February 1929 as part of their downfall as a result of their dispute with Joseph Stalin.

A number of places and things in the Soviet Union were named after Pravda. Among them was the city of Pravdinsk in Gorky Oblast (the home of a paper mill producing much newsprint for Pravda and other national newspapers), and a number of streets and collective farms.

As the names of the main communist newspaper and the main Soviet newspaper, Pravda and Izvestia, meant "the truth" and "the news" respectively, a popular saying was "there's no news in Pravda and no truth in Izvestia". Though not highly appreciated as an objective and unbiased news source, Pravda was regarded – both by Soviet citizens and by the outside world – as a government mouthpiece and therefore a reliable reflection of the Soviet government's positions on various issues. The publication of an article in Pravda could be taken as indication of a change in Soviet policy or the result of a power struggle in the Soviet leadership, and Western Sovietologists were regularly reading Pravda and paying attention to the most minute details and nuances.

Post-Soviet period

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union Pravda was sold by Russian president Boris Yeltsin to a Greek business family – the Giannikoses – in 1992, and the paper came under the control of their private company Pravda International.

In 1996, there was an internal dispute between the owners of Pravda International and some of the Pravda journalists which led to Pravda splitting into different entities. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation acquired the Pravda paper, while some of the original Pravda journalists separated to form Russia's first online paper (and the first online English paper) Pravda.ru, which is not connected to the Communist Party, but is run by journalists associated with the defunct Soviet Pravda. After a legal dispute between the rival parties, the Russian court of arbitration stipulated that both entities would be allowed to continue using the Pravda name. The Pravda paper is today run by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, whereas the online Pravda.ru is privately owned and has international editions published in Russian, English, French and Portuguese.

Pravda was a daily newspaper during the Soviet era but nowadays it is published three times a week, and its readership is largely online where it has a presence. Pravda still operates from the same headquarters at Pravda Street in Moscow from where journalists used to work on Pravda during the Soviet era. It operates under the leadership of journalist Boris Komotsky, who is also a member of the Russian State Duma.

On 5 May 2012, Pravda marked its centenary, with a grand celebration at the Trade Unions house organised by the Communist Party. The gala was attended by the former and current employees of the newspaper, its readers and party members, representatives of other communist media organisations. Gennady Zyuganov made a speech, and congratulatory messages were received from Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko.

McCain controversy

In 2013, after Russian president Vladimir Putin published an op-ed in The New York Times in support of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, US senator John McCain announced that he would publish a response article in Pravda, referring to the newspaper owned by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. McCain, however, eventually published his op-ed in Pravda.ru. This caused protests from the editor of communist Pravda Boris Komotsky and a response from the editor of Pravda.ru Dmitry Sudakov: Komotsky claimed that "there is only one Pravda in Russia, it is the organ of the Communist Party, and we have heard nothing about the intentions of the Republican senator" and dismissed Pravda.ru as an "Oklahoma-City-Pravda", while Sudakov derided Komotsky, claiming that "the circulation of the Communist Party Pravda is like a factory newspaper of AvtoVAZ from the Soviet times". McCain later attempted to publish his op-ed in the Communist Pravda as well, but the paper refused to publish it "because it was not aligned to the political positions of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation".

Editors-in-chief

The editorship of Pravda during its early years was collective and constantly changing; only the more important figures are listed here.

• Joseph Stalin, Yakov Sverdlov, Miron Chernomazov, Lev Kamenev, Vyacheslav Molotov (1912–1914)
• Publication suspended by order of the Bureau of Censorship (1914–1917)
• Vyacheslav Molotov, Alexander Shliapnikov, Konstantin Eremeev, Mikhail Kalinin (5–13 March 1917)
• Joseph Stalin, Matvei Muranov, Lev Kamenev (13 March – 4 April 1917)
• Vladimir Lenin, Grigory Zinoviev, Joseph Stalin, Matvei Muranov, Lev Kamenev (4 April – 5 July 1917)
• Yakov Sverdlov and others (6 July – 9 December 1917)
• Nikolai Bukharin (10 December 1917 – 23 February 1918)
• Unknown (24 February – July 1918)
• Nikolai Bukharin (July 1918 – October 1928; nominally until April 1929)
• Editorial board of Harald Krumin, Yemelyan Yaroslavsky and N. N. Popov (1929–1930)
• Maximilian Saveliev (1930)
• Lev Mekhlis (1930–1937)
• Alexander Poskrebyshev (1937–1940)
• Pyotr Pospelov (1940–1949)
• Mikhail Suslov (1940–1951)
• Leonid Ilyichev (1951–1953)
• Dmitri Shepilov (1953–1956)
• Pavel Satyukov (1956–1964)
• Aleksei Rumyantsev (1964–1965)
• Mikhail Zimyanin (1965–1976)
• Viktor Afanasyev (1976–1989)
• Ivan Frolov (1989–1991)
• Gennadiy Seleznyov (1991–1993)
• Viktor Linnik (1993–1994)
• Aleksander Ilyin (1994–2003)
• Valentina Nikiforova (2003–2005; acting)
• Valentin Shurchanov (2005–2009)
• Boris Komotsky (2009–present)

Similar newspapers in current communist countries

• Granma – Cuba, official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba;
• Nhân Dân – Vietnam, official newspaper of the Communist Party of Vietnam;
• Pasaxon – Laos, official newspaper of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party;
• People's Daily – People's Republic of China, official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party;
• Rodong Sinmun – North Korea, official newspaper of the Workers' Party of Korea;