Feisty Moscow Newspaper Folds--for Now : Media: The free market Nezavisimaya Gazeta endorsed has brought hard times to Russian journalism. The daily will open itself to investors.

By RICHARD BOUDREAUX

May 25, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

MOSCOW — Nezavisimaya Gazeta, one of the most daring, unbiased and prescient chroniclers of the demise of the Soviet Union, halted publication Wednesday after 4 1/2 years of hand-to-mouth subsistence to search for new funding.

“If Russia needs Nezavisimaya Gazeta, it will not die,” Editor in Chief Vitaly Tretyakov wrote in a gloomy front-page announcement. “If it dies, that will mean it is not needed.

“We are not bidding farewell,” he added. “But will we meet again?”

The bankruptcy of what many regarded as Russia’s first Western-style newspaper is a milestone in the post-Soviet decline of print journalism and new journalistic ideals.

Since its first issue on Dec. 21, 1990, Nezavisimaya has lived up to its name, which in Russian means independent . A beneficiary of Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s glasnost , it portrayed the Soviet leader as a prisoner of hard-line Communists who eventually tried to topple him.

After the Soviet collapse of 1991, the paper supported Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin--until he turned tanks against a reactionary uprising in October, 1993.

Through the years, it served as a serious podium for articulate outcasts of all stripes, and Communists joined democratic reformers Wednesday in mourning its indefinite suspension.

Rejecting government subsidies and corporate sponsorship, Nezavisimaya survived as a cooperative of its 200 employees on income from subscriptions, advertising and sporadic private donations with no strings attached.

But the free-market reforms Nezavisimaya endorsed brought hard times to newspapers across Russia.

Newsprint, production and delivery costs have outpaced readers’ willingness to pay higher subscription rates. A recent survey showed 15% of Muscovites who once read newspapers no longer do.

Rather than raise its rates, which remained about 10 cents per copy, Nezavisimaya slimmed down from eight pages to four and cut its press run from 200,000 issues to 50,000 per day to lower costs, but still fell $400,000 in debt.

“All possibilities to exist on our own financially have been exhausted,” Tretyakov said.

Such pressures have driven editors of other Russian papers to sensationalism or various forms of dependence.

The most popular daily, Moskovsky Komsomolets, entertains 1.5 million readers with a mixture of cynicism and humor, serious investigative reporting and articles on such topics as extraterrestrials and phallic surgery.

One of the most respected papers, Sevodnya, which hired away many of Nezavisimaya’s best reporters with higher pay, is subsidized by the Most Group, a financial conglomerate led by a rich, high-profile critic of Yeltsin.

Nezavisimaya’s disheveled offices near the former KGB headquarters fell into a smoke-filled funk Wednesday as reporters with nowhere else to go gathered around computer terminals to ponder the inevitable horror of sacrificing their independence to revive the paper.

Many who wandered in and out are young journalists who started their careers at Nezavisimaya and, in the fast-paced days of 1991, were on the cutting edge of Russia’s new journalism. They are still in it for the ideals, not salaries of $30 to $40 per month.

“Our management laid the old Soviet methods of work to rest. We never had anyone breathe down our neck and tell us, ‘Put that in, take that out,’ ” said Liana Minasyan, one of four reporters sharing three bottles of vermouth.

Vitaly N. Kolbasyuk, the managing editor, said the paper will open itself to outside investors, hoping to raise $3.6 million to pay off its debts, restore its circulation and add special supplements. With Nezavisimaya’s solid reputation, he said, that shouldn’t be a problem; the paper should be back in circulation this summer.

The problem, he said, will be where to draw the line between survival and slavery.

“We realize that no one is eager to part with his money for nothing,” he said. “We are ready for this. In order to be able to publish at least some objective articles, we must resign ourselves to the idea that we will have to publish some unobjective ones too.”

Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.