Владимир Познер: Француз туған, кеңестік және американ журналисінің өмірі мен қызметі

French born Russian American journalist (born 1934)

Vladimir Vladimirovich Pozner (Влади́мир Влади́мирович По́знер; born 1 April 1934) is a French born Russian American journalist and presenter. He was memorable as a spokesman for the Soviets in part because he grew up in the United States and speaks fluent English, Russian and French. Pozner later described his role as propaganda. After the Cold War, Pozner moved to the United States to work with Phil Donahue, before returning to Moscow to continue working as a television journalist. From 2008 until 2022, he hosted the eponymous show Pozner on Russia's Channel One where he interviewed public figures.

Vladimir Pozner was born in Paris on 1 April 1934, to a Russian Jewish father, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Pozner, and a French Catholic mother, Géraldine Lutten. and later Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. Robert Hollander, an elementary school friend of Pozner, remembered him most vividly for "his capacities for, one, having extraordinarily attractive fantasies and, two, for getting the rest of us to believe them." In 1946, with the advent of what later came to be called McCarthyism, Pozner senior began to have serious problems with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, because of his pro Soviet views and alleged cooperation with the Soviet intelligence services. The documents that conclusively proved the secret service connections of his father were published in 1996 in the United States, as part of the Venona project files. As a result, the Pozners intended to return to France, but Pozner senior was refused a French visa after being denounced to the French Foreign Ministry as a "subversive element" and a spy. The family moved in 1948 to the Soviet sector of Berlin, where Pozner senior was offered a position with SovExportFilm, an international distributor of Soviet films. At one time Pozner junior claimed to have stayed behind in New York, attending Columbia College between 1950 and December 1953; however, there appears to be no record of him at Columbia. In 1953 the younger Pozner enrolled at Moscow State University, Faculty of Biology and Soil Science, majoring in human physiology. He graduated in 1958.

Pozner began his career as "quote, unquote a journalist" – unwittingly, by his own account – in a disinformation department of the KGB. In 1961 he was offered the position of senior editor with the English language Soviet Life magazine. In 1967 he transferred to a sister publication, Sputnik, leaving it in February 1970 to take up a post with the State Television and Radio Committee, where he became a chief commentator and host of the propaganda radio program the Voice of Moscow on the North American service of Radio Moscow. Beginning in the early 1970s, and until the early 1990s, Pozner was a regular guest on Ray Briem's talk show on KABC in Los Angeles. During the 1980s, he was a favourite guest on Ted Koppel's Nightline. Pozner was the host of Moscow Meridian, an English language current affairs program focusing on the Soviet Union; the show was produced by Gosteleradio, the Soviet State Committee for Television and Radio and broadcast on the Satellite Program Network. He also often appeared on The Phil Donahue Show. In his Western media appearances Pozner was a charismatic and articulate apologist for some of the Soviet Union's most controversial foreign and domestic policy decisions. He would frequently draw parallels and point out similarities between Soviet and Western policies as well as candidly admitting the existence of certain problems in the USSR. However, while stopping short of unequivocal endorsement and support, he nevertheless rationalized, among other events, the arrest and exiling of Andrei Sakharov, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, in his 1990 autobiography Parting with Illusions. Later, he wrote that some of the positions he had taken were wrong and immoral. In a 2005 interview with NPR's On the Media, Pozner spoke openly about his role as a Soviet spokesman, stating bluntly, "What I was doing was propaganda." Comparing his former role to that of Karen Hughes, the U. S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs under George W. Bush, he commented that, "You know, as someone who's gone through this and someone who regrets having done what he's done, and who spent many, many years of his life, and I think probably the best years of my life, doing something that was wrong, I say it just isn't worth it". Despite his frequent appearances in the North American media and his near celebrity status there as the principal spokesman for the Soviet Union, Pozner remained virtually unknown at home. This changed in the mid 1980s, when Pozner co hosted several bilateral, televised discussions (or "spacebridges") between audiences in the Soviet Union and the US, carried via satellite. These were initially produced with Helene Keyssar at the University of California, San Diego. They included "Moscow Calling San Diego: Children and Film" (with Mike Cole), "Remembering War" (May 7, 1985, with Fred Starr). Later programs included "Citizens Summit I Leningrad/Seattle" (December 29, 1985) and "Citizens Summit II: Women to Women Leningrad/Boston" (May 20, 1986) both with Phil Donahue. The programs marked a dramatic turning point in Pozner's career, garnering him instant renown and wide popularity and acclaim from domestic audiences in the USSR. Pozner also introduced Russian rock band Autograph for Live Aid. He was promoted to the position of "political observer of Central Television", the highest journalistic rank at Gosteleradio, and started to work on programs that were broadcast domestically. However, in 1991 Pozner was asked to resign after being quoted voicing his support for Boris Yeltsin over Mikhail Gorbachev. Later that year, Pozner received an offer to work with Phil Donahue and moved to the United States. From 1991 to 1994 they co hosted Pozner/Donahue, a weekly, issues oriented roundtable program, which was aired both on CNBC and in syndication. While living in New York, Pozner regularly commuted to Moscow to tape his programs that aired in Russia. Pozner returned to Moscow in 1997, continuing his work as an independent television journalist. Later that year, he founded the School for Television Excellence («Школа телевизионного мастерства») in Moscow to educate and promote young journalists. From its foundation in 1994 until 2008 Pozner was president of the Russian Television Academy, which annually awards the prestigious TEFI trophy. Pozner also worked for the Institute for US and Canadian Studies, a Soviet think tank. Since 2004, Pozner and his brother Pavel have owned a French brasserie in Moscow, Жеральдин (Chez Géraldine), named after their mother.

Pozner is an atheist. He advocates the right to euthanasia, advocates the legalization of same sex marriage, and supports the idea of combating drug trafficking and crime among drug addicts by legalizing the sale of drugs. He credits the expansion of NATO since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the post cold war strategy, and the subsequent lack of attention to specific Russian diplomatic overtures for the creation of Vladimir Putin.

In April 2021, Pozner was forced to cut his birthday celebration short and flee Georgia after his hotel was blockaded by protesters calling him a "Kremlin propagandist". Protesters pelted Pozner's entourage with eggs and were angry with his past statements, where in 2010, Pozner blamed Georgia for the situation that led to the Russo Georgian War and said: "Georgia lost [Abkhazia] forever" and that it "will never be Georgia's territory again." The visit was permitted by the Georgian government, and Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili defended his government's decision to permit the visit, saying that Pozner had a negative test for COVID 19 on entry which was valid and that he did not appear to break any local laws aimed at opposing the Russian military occupation of the breakaway regions. Garibashvili blamed the National Movement and its supporters for the incident, calling the protests "actions that violated civilized norms and Georgian standards".