Egor Yakovlev Passed Away
Russia’s foremost journalist, Egor Yakovlev, 76, died September 18, 2005. Yakovlev’s Moskovskie Novosti, which he took over far back in 1986, triggered off an epoch of new journalism in Russia.
Having emerged though a factory newspaper, Egor Yakovlev had worked in Moskovskaya Pravda, Sovetskaya Rossia, Jornalist, Izvestia before becoming the editor-in-chief at Moskovskie Novosti in 1986.
“It is the end of the legend, the end of the man without whom Russia’s journalism would have been something else,” said Igor Yakovenko, general secretary at the Russian Union of Journalists, adding wherever Yakovlev was, it was the place of the crucial events, the center of Russia’s journalism, even at Soviet times when he had transformed out-of-the-way Journalist into the best magazine in the country. “It was the same when he made Moskovskie Novosti the main newspaper in Russia.”
“We always reckoned him as a granddad, no one called him Egor Vladimirovich, just Egor,” said Alexey Venediktov, editor-in-chief at the Echo of Moscow radio station. “For us, he was the example of composure and confidence, the example of how to handle authorities - releasing critical data about them, never yielding to them.”
“He was the great editor of the great Moskovskie Novosti,” journalist Yury Rost said. “You would have felt calm and protected with him; he had brought up a raft of reporters.”
“The great man and the great friend,” said member of the former Politbureau of the former USSR, today’s president of Democracy Foundation, Academician Alexander Yakovlev. “Always faithful to freedom and democracy, In Politbureau, they had tried to ouster him ten times.”
Egor Yakovlev, whose last office was the chairman at Moskovskie Novosti’s Public Council had entered a hospital because of the heart trouble a few days before the 75-year anniversary due in March 2005. After receiving treatment in the Central Clinical Hospital, Yakovlev went to Germany. “It seemed he would recover, that the treatment in Germany helped him,” said Tatiana Blinova, head of the foreign ties department at Moskovskie Novosti.
Suffering from severe pulmonary and heart insufficiency with pneumonia always exacerbating, Egor Yakovlev died in the Moscow hospital Sunday.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 19, 2005
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Photo: Vasily Shaposhnikov
