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"Pravda" editors pledge to do better, 23 August 1991

Editors’ statement on the front page of iconic Soviet/ Russian daily "Pravda" from 23 August 1991, just after the failed 1991 anti-Gorbachev putsch.

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"Komsomolskaya pravda" sets a Guiness World Record

In May 1990, the long-running Soviet newspaper “Komsomolskaya pravda” set a world record with nearly 22 million daily copies. This staggering total marked the peak of Soviet print media's reach before the 1990 Press Law shifted financial responsibility to outlets themselves, making such high print runs unsustainable.

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Citizen K.'s "Kitchen Diary" in "Komsomolskaya Pravda"

This editorial call, published on 29 September 1990 in the daily “Komsomolskaya pravda” (1925-), asked readers to keep and submit "kitchen diaries" on shortages and price changes in their area as a way to track the progress (and deficiencies) of perestroika-era economic reforms.

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Press Law of 1990

In 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022) signed into law a press reform that reinforced existing commitments to speech and press freedoms, as articulated in the version of the Soviet Constitution adopted in 1977 under Leonid Brezhnev (1906-1982).

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Novikov and Afrika Come Out

During an interview, the artists Timur Novikov and Sergey “Afrika” Bugaev talk about their otherwise unconfessed homosexuality in an intentionally shocking way.

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