Express-Gazette Cover, Headlines: “Pugacheva is being tricky”, “Fillip’s Spermatozoid” 1998

The Express-Gazette was Russia’s first post-Soviet tabloid, coming into a media landscape where no such publication yet existed. Soviet news media was typically serious and early post-soviet media similarly sought an elevated level of political discourse. The Express-Gazette was created by veteran journalist Alexander Kuprianov. According to Kuprianov, the foundation happened shortly after he was fired from his editorial position at the Russian Gazette, following the Russian Constitutional Crisis of 1993, for being perceived as linked to Ruslan Khasbulatov, one of the coup attempt’s leaders. The influential diplomat Leonid Zamyatin, once the ambassador to Great Britain, encouraged Kuprianov to create The Express-Gazette, helping arrange its publication by “Komsomol Truth”. The venerable Moscow publishing house was responsible for the newspaper Komsomol Truth, and had been printing news since 1925. It was greatly bolstered by the Express-Gazette, which experienced explosive popularity in the first half of the 1990s. Like all tabloids, everywhere, Express-Gazette specialized in lurid celebrity gossip and provocative opinion columns, often accompanied by ludicrously over-the-top headlines, such as the one featured in the cover image, where the main story speculates about the possibility that Alla Pugacheva and Fillip Kirokorov’s child was artificially conceived with grotesque specificity. Such stories have led to regular lawsuits involving the Express-Gazette, but these only fortify its status as the dominant tabloid in Russia even today.