Akademik

   Newspaper. Founded by Leon Trotsky in 1908, Pravda (“Truth”) was originally published in Vienna, Austria, and was smuggled into Russia. Following the Bolshevik Revolution, the newspaper moved to Moscow and became the principal mouthpiece of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. During the Soviet era, subscription to the newspaper was compulsory for party members, state-run firms, military units, libraries, and many other organizations. There were also republican and regional versions of the newspaper (such as Ukrainskaia Pravda in Ukraine). After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Pravda was seized by the new government by writ of Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Some of the editorial staff moved to found a new paper with the same title. In 1991, the new paper was sold to Greek entrepreneurs Theodoros and Christos Giannikos. In print, the relaunched Pravda tended to analyze events from a leftist-nationalist point of view. The paper was shuttered in 1996 after years of falling subscriptions, though the Giannikos brothers continued a tabloid version of the publication. Subsequently, a group of journalists launched Pravda Online; still in operation today, the website often takes a sensationalist approach to news reporting.