KOMMERSANT

'''Kommersant''' (Cyrillic: Коммерса́нтъ) (which literally translates as "The Businessman") is a commerce-oriented newspaper published in Russia. As of 2005, the circulation was 131,000.
The newspaper was initially published in 1909, and it was closed down following the Bolshevik seizure of power and the introduction of censorship in 1919.
In 1990, with the onset of press freedom in Russia, Kommersant was re-established under the ownership of businessman and publicist Vladimir Yakovlev.
To make the point that the publication had outlasted the Soviet regime, "Kommersant" is spelled in Russian with a terminal hard sign (ъ) -- a diacritical mark that was abolished by the post-revolution Russian spelling reform. This is played up in the Kommersant logo, which features a script hard sign at the end of somewhat more formal font.
In 1997, autos-to-Aeroflot mogul Boris Berezovsky – a member of the former President Boris Yeltsin's 'family'^[1] – bought the Kommersant publishing house, which included ''Kommersant-daily'', two serious weekly magazines (the political ''Kommersant-vlast'' (literally 'Power') and the financial ''Kommersant-dengi'' ('Money') – as well as entertainment magazines ''Domovoi'' and ''Avtopilot'' and ''Molotok'', a teen magazine, whch later incurred the authorities' wrath^[2]
In August 2006, Patarkatsishvili sold his 100% stake in the Kommersant publishing house to Alisher Usmanov^[3], head of Gazprom's Gazprominvestholding subsidiary. Uzbekhistan-born Usmanov, thought to to have close ties with the Kremlin, had paid about $200 million for the publishing house^[4] – and splashed out a further $30 million in November 2006 buying the Gazeta.ru web news portal from Sekret Firmy Publishing.^[5]
After clashing with Usmanov, Kommersant editor-in-chief Vladislav Borodulin quit.^[6] "[Borodulin’s] decision to resign wasn't forced, but evidently they expressed different views on how the publishing house should be developed," said the group's commercial director. Andrei Vasilyev,appointed for a second stint at the helm of the daily – after a long run from 1999 to 2005 – said ''Kommersant-daily'' had no intention of following any imposed policy, and added that the edition would carry articles that might not please the owner.^[7][8]

Contents

See also

External links

See also

★ Ivan Safronov

External links

★ KommersantЪ, English version online

★ BBC news reporting on Kommersant's protest

★ Photo gallery celebrating Kommersant's 15th anniversary

★ Story in the St. Petersburg Times about the sale of Kommersant