Мәскеу жаңалықтары: Тарихы мен тағдыры

Russian newspaper

the English language newspaper

The Moscow News, which began publication in 1930, was Russia's oldest English language newspaper. Many of its feature articles used to be translated from the Russian language Moskovskiye Novosti.

In 1930 The Moscow News was founded by American socialist Anna Louise Strong, who was one of the leaders of the Seattle General Strike in 1919. It was approved by the Communist leadership—at that time already dominated by Joseph Stalin—in 1930 as an international newspaper with the purpose of spreading the ideas of socialism to international audience. The paper was soon published in many languages, including major world languages, such as French, German, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Hungarian, and Arabic, as well as languages of neighboring countries, such as Finnish. The first head of the foreign department of the Moscow News was British communist Rose Cohen. She was arrested in Moscow in August 1937, and shot on November 28, 1937 (she was rehabilitated in the USSR in 1956). In 1949, the Moscow News was shut down after its editor in chief, Mikhail Borodin, was arrested (and most likely died in a prison camp (Gulag). The paper resumed publication under the supervision of the Communist Party on January 4, 1956. In 2003 The Moscow News was sold to the Yukos funded Open Russia Foundation. Under President Vladimir Putin, and suffering from declining sales, Moscow News was bought by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, one of Russia's oligarchs and owner of Yukos. The Moscow News has had numerous other owners: Ogonyok, International Book, and the All Union Society of Cultural Ties with Foreign Countries among others have had a stake in the historic newspaper at one time or another. In 2007, the English version of The Moscow News was partially owned by the RIA Novosti news agency, with some of articles translated from Moskovskiye Novosti. Between January and September 2007, the paper was managed by Anthony Louis, who introduced several changes. The paper's format was changed to a completely new layout with new fonts and masthead design. The paper went from 16 to 32 pages and featured a variety of popular columnists, both Russian and foreigners.

In the summer of 2012, the paper started appearing less often, dropping being from a bi weekly to being a weekly, and its news and politics sections took on a broader, more in depth focus. It ran occasional advertisement, and was distributed mainly free of charge. It continued to cover both Russian and global news and columns by writers including Mark Galeotti. The paper was financed entirely by its owners. It ceased publication in 2014 and became a web only news medium, although from two months later the web edition was no longer updated. The printed paper's last editor in chief was Natalia Antonova. On January 23, 2014, the paper ceased appearing in print "by order of the management". On March 14, 2014, the paper "ceased updating materials on its news website, Facebook page and Twitter account due to the liquidation process and reorganization of its parent company, the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti". Both events followed President Vladimir Putin's December 9, 2013 abolition of the state owned news agency, which would be merged in 2014 into a new news agency Rossiya Segodnya (Russia Today). Editor Natalia Antonova wrote in a March 14 farewell signed article: "If you write about Russia with any kind of nuance, you may confuse and anger many people. At first this will scare you, then it will infuriate you, then you'll get used to it." The newspaper can be viewed in its entirety from 1930 – 2014 in a digital archive.