From the moment in the 1930s when American journalists first established themselves in Moscow until today, the American reading and viewing audience has, in large measure, been misled about the reality of life in the Soviet Union.
Only recently, however, a respected American journalist, Andrew Nagorski of Newsweek, issued a harsh indictment of the manner in which his colleagues do their job in Moscow.
Nagorski was the kind of correspondent Soviet officials dislike: He spoke Russian, was married to a Polish-born woman, had many Russian friends, and often traveled outside Moscow to learn what ordinary citizens thought and said about their country.
From the moment of his arrival in May 1981, until he was expelled for "impermissible methods of journalistic activities" in August 1982, Nagorski was a thorn in the side of the Kremlin. He became the first American reporter to be thrown out of Russia since 1977.
During his 14 months in the Soviet Union, Nagorski traveled to eight cities, covering stories ranging from official corruption in the Black Sea resort of Sochi to the qualms of draft-age Soviet Muslims living near Afghanistan. From testimony given at the Moscow trial of two projectionists who were fighting their dismissal from the Soviet state film organization, he learned--and reported--about a secret trove of Western movies that had been assembled for the enjoyment of the Kremlin elite.
Nagorski's recently published book, Reluctant Farewell (Holt, Rinehhart and Winston, 1985), is a candid look inside the Soviet Union today. What makes it unique is its harsh indictment of the manner in which the majority of American journalists based in Moscow conduct themselves.
Upon arriving in Moscow, Nagorski discovered that the vast majority of American residents there--diplomats, journalists, and others--live in isolation from their Russian environment.
"We soon realized that only a distinct minority of the foreign community moved beyond that shuttered existence to spend a significant proportion of their time with Russians, or even knew more than a handful of Russians on a social basis," he recounts.
Nagorski quickly discovered that American journalists in Moscow were "divided between those…comfortably slipping into the foreign community cocoon, and those who did not. The single most important factor in determining to which group a correspondent belonged was whether or not he spoke Russian, since a reporter without at least a rudimentary working knowledge of the language had no chance of truly understanding Soviet society. I had though before coming to Moscow that almost all correspondents working there would have achieved at least a minimal level of competence in Russian, but within I learned otherwise."
The American press corps in Moscow was and is composed of about 30 people. That number is strictly determined by the Soviets themselves, who only allow major news agencies, newspapers, magazines, and the radio and television networks to maintain bureaus there. The Associated Press in 1981 had five correspondents and United
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