Open-and-Shut Case?

Viktor Karpov, the editor of a Soviet literary journal and head of the Soviet Writers Union, told an audience in Scotland this week that, except for military secrets, censorship no longer exists in the Soviet Union. “There are no forbidden topics,” he insisted during a discussion of Soviet General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s vaunted policy of g l asnost , or openness, in the Soviet media.

Sergei Grigoryants would have found that interesting. He is a former political prisoner who is making a courageous attempt to take glasnost at face value by publishing an independent magazine that openly discusses subjects normally avoided by the official press.

Aside from illegal underground publications, there is no independent magazine, newspaper or broadcasting station in the Soviet Union. Every media outlet is the official voice of some Soviet institution. Pravda, for example, is published by the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Izvestia speaks for the government, Trud for the government-run labor movement.

Under the banner of glasnost, Gorbachev has urged Soviet journalists to criticize shortcomings, expose wrongdoers and tackle previously forbidden subjects. Indeed, the Soviet press now discusses prostitution, the very existence of which was previously denied, and admits that the Soviet Union ranks 50th among world nations in infant mortality. Andrei Sakharov, the country’s most prominent dissident, says that the media are “incomparably less controlled than before.” But he and others add that glasnost remains selective, Karpov’s statement notwithstanding.

Grigoryants is challenging the Kremlin to practice what it preaches. His magazine, named Glasnost, will discuss such topics as the constraints on religious liberty, the fate of political prisoners, the role of the KGB secret police and the limits on emigration. One issue of the magazine has already been distributed. The second is due out this week.

Glasnost is not an underground publication; Grigoryants has sought to register the journal with the authorities, and is trying to arrange for office space and printing.

So far the authorities have treated his challenge gingerly. But Vechernyaya Moskva, a Moscow newspaper believed by some to be under KGB control, launched a blistering attack the other day, calling the magazine “immoral and unnecessary” and reviving charges of currency speculation that were used to imprison Grigoryants in 1975.

The editor of Glasnost concludes that the attack was intended to discredit and intimidate him. The outside world, which wants to believe the best of Gorbachev and his reform efforts, will watch with interest to see whether Glasnost, with a capital G, will be closed because of its openness.