LIMITED EDITIONS

Evening Post, Issue 154, 1 July 1936, Page 4

LIMITED EDITIONS

RUSSIAN NEWSPAPERS

After seventeen years of Bolshevik rule Russia still has only two afternoon newspapers published in limited editions of 100,000 each (says the "Chicago Tribune").

The two largest newspapers in Russia are "Izvestia" and "Pravda," both published in Moscow. . Both are fourpage papers and generally publish identical news. There are a number of other dailies devoted to the interests of special branches of Russian economy. One concentrates on industrial development, another on transport, another on food supplies. These are small, six-column, four-page papers.

The Soviet provincial Press follows the same standardised pattern, but the size of the paper is smaller, a fivecolumn page slightly larger than an American tabloid. Only a meagre amount of news is published. The "Izvestia" and "Pravda" sometimes contain . two or three columns of foreign news and the provincial papers seldom contain half a column. The remainder of the space is filled with special articles generally explaining the latest policies of the Kremlin. Russia, today a country of more than 160,000,000, has only two cartoonists of note, and no paper makes a cartoon a daily feature.

There are. only Uvo fortnightly publications in Russia devoted to humour and satire. Both are printed on cheap, rough paper and their' circulation is unknown.. Soviet magazines appear irregularly and arc also printed on cheap paper. Illustrations are infrequent. Improper adjustment of the presses often fogs the paper with ink, making reacting difficult.