181 CHRONICLESnDIGGING FOR THE TRUTH IN PRAVDAnby Leon SteinmetznIconfess — I know Russian. This ability has been causingnme a lot of irritation lately. I have been bombarded withnquestions from people who don’t know the language, aboutnwhat is really going on in Moscow now. In my answers, innorder to be absolutely unbiased, I always rely on “pravda.” Inmean not just the Russian word which implies “truth”; I amnalso talking about Pravda, the major organ of the CommunistnParty’s Central Committee. Because from Pravda,nmuch more than from any other Soviet publication, can onendeduce the tone of the current internal debates, andndecipher the real meaning of the dispatches sent by thenParty to all segments of the society, from an impoverishednkolkhoz,to the strategic naval force.nI usually only glance through Pravda (and even that I donrarely), but after the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Decembern1987,1 was curious enough to take an issue of the papernand examine it thoroughly. Several months later, I repeatednthe procedure, and this is the result of my impressions.nCompared to, say, a major American daily, which cannbreak your leg if you drop it, Pravda is very meager—it hasnLeon Steinmetz’s articles have appeared in Commentarynand National Review. He teaches creative writing atnHarvard.n• * » , ^n^Smf^AftJ-^f^f^l-v* ••n; >• Ln..•. ^.-.«v ^-9St afi-n'”•iSSIIja^^^nsj* J^^^^^Hltnnnjust six or occasionally eight pages. The front page is devotednmainly to domestic affairs and to the leading editorial, anbroad Politburo directive of the day.nIn the December 1987 issue, the editorial called for thenCommunists to be at the avant-garde of the struggle fornmore effective management of kolkhozes and factories.nDirectly beneath it was a large photograph of a middle-agednman in a three-piece suit with medals, standing next to anlathe, explaining something to a young machinist dressed innoveralls. “A Dedicated Communist and a Hero of SocialistnLabor, Machinist Grishin Shares His Experience,” thencaption said. Also on the front page were a number of shortnreports from different regions of the country, some praising,nsome critical: milk quotas had been fulfilled in Kirghizia, butnfour million mole pelts were rotting in a warehouse innVologda; transport workers were doing a good job in Yakutia,nbut furniture manufacturers in Georgia were making shakynstools. One item voiced the complaints of a provincial Partynofficial about the inadequate number of propagandists whoncould explain the nature of glasnost to people in thenprovinces, while another informed the Soviet reader of thencreation in Moscow—in the spirit of the new friendship —nof a joint Soviet-American commission to study the problemnof dancing.nThe front page of the current Pravda is almost the same,nexcept that instead of one photo of a Hero of Socialist Laborn