Pugacheva and “Filipp's Spermatozoid” in Express-Gazette, 1998

The Express-Gazette was Russia’s first post-Soviet tabloid, entering a media landscape where no such publication yet existed. Soviet news media had typically been serious, while early post-soviet media similarly sought an elevated level of political discourse. Not so the Express-Gazette, brainchild of veteran journalist Alexander Kuprianov, who founded it shortly after being fired from his editorial position at the Russian Gazette in 1993. 

 

In the wake of that October’s Constitutional Crisis, Kuprianov was perceived as linked to Ruslan Khasbulatov, a leader of the anti-Yeltsin faction. The influential diplomat Leonid Zamyatin, once the Soviet ambassador to Great Britain, encouraged Kuprianov to create The Express-Gazette, helping arrange its publication by Komsomolskaya Pravda (“Komsomol Truth”). This venerable Moscow publishing house was responsible for an eponymous newspaper, in print since 1925. 

 

As the Express-Gazette experienced explosive popularity in the first half of the 1990s, it greatly bolstered the fortunes of the older publication. Like all tabloids everywhere, The Express-Gazette specialized in lurid celebrity gossip and provocative opinion columns, often accompanied by ludicrously over-the-top headlines like the one featured in this artifact. On the cover of this issue, from September 1995, the main story speculates—with grotesque specificity—about the possibility that the child of pop stars Alla Pugacheva and Filipp Kirokorov was artificially conceived. Although the headline hedges its bets by acknowledging that its information about “Kirkorov’s sperm” may be “unconfirmed,” it exemplifies the outlandishness of Express-Gazette’s claims. Stories like this one have led to regular lawsuits involving the Express-Gazette, but these only fortify its status as the dominant tabloid in contemporary Russia.