Some trade mag asked me to write an article on the print market in Russia. The text is below.
Print isn’t dying in Russia… it’s already dead. Well newspapers anyway.
Under communism, Russian print (or the Soviet Union to be precise) enjoyed huge circulations. It’s amazing what you can achieve with a large docile population and the use of violence. Despite commendably high literacy Russians are not great readers of daily or weekly titles. According to Wikipedia the highest selling daily only sells 735,000 copies. About the same as the Guardian & Times combined. There are many reasons for this but chief amongst them is that after years of being lied to with Kremlin propaganda Russians lost faith in a lively free press.
I use the metro to avoid the notorious Moscow traffic jams. In the dark underbelly of Moscow you will witness that everyone has an electronic device of some sort. I doubt that they are reading Pravda on them.
The situation with magazines is the opposite. Russians endured 70+ years of living in a socialist paradise “where poverty & injustice were equally distributed.”* Given this fact they have a surprising appetite for bread & circuses. And magazines fill that desire with their glossy pictures of the noveau riche & unattainable wealth. Also profit is not the only motive in the Russian press market, many publications are vanity projects of minor oligarchs.
And finally as Russian is spoken in many neighbouring countries it is easier to make money with niche titles. I would not be surprised to find “Gay Trucker” on the shelves of my local supermarket.
*The Economist
