Paper Mocking Yakovlev Is Seized
By Vladimir Kovalyev
STAFF WRITER ST Petersburg Times 25 april 2000
Local police last week confiscated copies of a newspaper which featured a
silhouette of a man apparently meant to be City Gov. Vladimir Yakovlev with
his genitals exposed.
Thirteen thousand copies of the paper, called Moya Stolitsa, or My Capital,
were seized by police as they were being distributed for free to
residential mailboxes in the southeastern Nevsky District on Thursday
evening.
Police spokesmen said that the newspapers were taken because information on
the paper's price, as well as the address and telephone number of the
printers, were not published, in violation of federal law concerning the
media.
"The newspaper was breaking federal law, and that is why we confiscated
these copies," said Sergei Nefyodov, head of police station No. 45 in the
Nevsky District, in a telephone interview on Friday. He said the matter had
been passed on to the City Prosecutor's Office. The City Electoral
Commission has also asked the Prosecutor's Office to investigate.
Indeed, the confiscated issue of Moya Stolistsa, which came out April 8,
lists only its editor, a deputy editor, a publisher registration number and
typsetting house, Kurier, on its masthead.
But the newspaper's publishers say 13,000 copies of the paper's claimed
500,000 print run were rounded up in violation of free speech rights
because the graphic silhouette of Yakolvev - complete with his penis
hanging below his overcoat and standing over the city - offended City Hall.
The illustration was accompanied by a caption reading "Economic planner
Yakovlev shows the city his equipment (khozyaistvo)."
Moya Stolitsa is published by the Cross Media company, which also produces
the local weekly newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and the satirical newspaper
Komar.
Both publications are known for their anti-Yakovlev stance. Novaya Gazeta
has consistently criticized the governor over the last three years. Last
month, Komar printed photographs of the heads of both Yakovlev and Vice
Prime Minster Valentina Matviyenko - who was then considering running in
next month's gubernatorial elections - along with various items of
clothing, including underwear, and invited readers to cut out the
photographs and assemble their "fantasy politician."
Alexei Razaryonov, the head of Cross Media, said the publishing house had
been informed earlier this month that it was violating media law by the
northwestern department of the State Press Committee.
"According to the law, we have one month to correct our mistakes [in Moya
Stolitsa] and we will definitely do that," Razaryonov said in telephone
interview Friday.
Anna Sharogradskaya of the National Press Institute agreed, saying the
paper must be proved to have broken a law before its circulation is
forcibly stopped by authorities.
Razaryonov accused the police of using the media law as a club to beat
papers that printed anti-Yakolvev material.
But Razaryonov also refused to say who financed the Cross Media company,
although he did say that Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces (SPS), two
of the main opposition parties in St. Petersburg, had nothing to do with
Moya Stolitsa.
Yabloko representatives moved to distance the party from Moya Stolitsa on
Monday, and condemned the manner in which the paper had attacked Yakovlev.
"[These are] the tactics of [Petersburg Television's] analytical program
'Politics - Petersburg Style,'" said Boris Vishnevsky, a Yabloko member, in
reference to the controversial program now off the air.
"I don't feel like defending the freedom of the press right now," said
Alexander Afanasiyev, the governor's spokesman, who himself used a crude
Russian swearword to describe the poster.
Some politicians, however, condemned the "arbitrariness of the local
police" in confiscating the paper.
"It is [as if] the police solved all the organized crime, corruption and
contract killings in St. Petersburg, and the only thing left is the media
destroying [City Hall's] idyllic picture of the city," said Ruslan Linkov,
head of the local Democratic Russia party, which is affiliated to SPS.
