Word: ehrenburg
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...Ilya Ehrenburg...
...scratch of a pen that grated Stalin could prove mortal to its author, and Ilya Ehrenburg set out to safeguard himself from an early, flowered grave. Survive he did, earning the epithet of panderer and opportunist from his detractors. Ehrenburg survived not only the Revolution (he published his first books of poems while the Czar was still on his throne) but all the turns and terrors of successive Soviet regimes...
Such a jeer at the Soviet press is common enough in the West; this time the quip appeared in Soviet Press, a monthly magazine that is circulated largely among Russian newsmen. The criticism had an added impact because the speaker was Ilya Ehrenburg, 75, one of Russia's best-known journalists. Ehrenburg admitted to his interviewer that while he spends more than half an hour a day reading the French newspaper Le Monde, he seldom devotes as much time to any Soviet paper. His explanation was blunt: "The Soviet stories are much more poorly written. Many important events outside...
Soviet journalists who are sent abroad, said Ehrenburg, rarely demonstrate any enterprise; they are content to feed back the cliches their editors seem to want. "How silly, for instance, to deduce 'excesses of capitalism' from the fact that in England there exist barbershops for dogs and in France there is even a restaurant for them." People who are kind to dogs, said Ehrenburg, are likely to be kind to human beings. "After all, we too are admonishing our street urchins to love cats and dogs instead of torturing them." It is just as bad, he added, for reporters...
Soviet journalists, said Ehrenburg, should imitate some of the better practices of the Western press. A correspondent, he said, should "speak the language of the country on which he reports, maintain close contact with all circles of society, keep his ear open to a variety of contradictory opinions, and only then sum up his impressions...