Kommersant

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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 letter that is silent at the end of a word in modern Russian, and was thus 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].

Berezovsky sacked Kommersant's director-general, Andrei Vassiliev, and editor-in-chief,Alexander Stukalin, on 14 July 2005 ^[3] in a move widely seen as preparation for the 2008 Russian presidential elections.

In January 2005 it published blank pages as a protest at a court ruling ordering it to publish a denial of a story about a crisis at Alfa Bank. The sole article in the paper was this one, publish upside down, on the front page. The headline of the article was "Full Plaintiff" (полный истец) which has little meaning, but rhymes with a Russian swear word, meaning "complete disaster" (пиздец).

London-resident Berezovsky sold the Kommersant publishing house to an old friend and business partner, Georgian fruit canner and opposition television station owner Badri Patarkatsishvili, who was already chairman of the Kommersant company's board.^[4]

In August 2006, Patarkatsishvili sold his 100% stake in the Kommersant publishing house to Alisher Usmanov^[5], head of Gazprom's Gazprominvestholding subsidiary. Uzbekhistan-born Usmanov, thought to have close ties with the Kremlin, had paid about $200 million for the publishing house^[6] – and splashed out a further $30 million in November 2006 buying the Gazeta.ru web news portal from Sekret Firmy Publishing.^[7]

After clashing with Usmanov, Kommersant editor-in-chief Vladislav Borodulin quit.^[8] "[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.^[9]

Kommersant remains somewhat of a rarity in President Vladimir Putin's Russia.^{[citation needed]} In March 2007 a newly created press watchdog, Rosokhrankultura, warned the paper that it should not mention the National Bolshevik Party because the authorities had denied the ultranationalist party official registration.^[10]^[11]