Farewell To A 'Golden Prince'
I had not expected that one of my first duties upon returning to Moscow after an absence of four years would be to attend a funeral.
But Russia has a way of confounding expectations, and I will join thousands of others paying their respects to Artyom Borovik, who died this week in a plane crash at the age of 37.
In the Gorbachev years when the Soviet Union was spinning apart, Artyom was one of a handful of young newsmen and women remaking Russian journalism. He was the son of a famous Soviet journalist, but unlike so many of Moscow's "golden youth" - as the children of privilege were called - he used his position to push the boundaries, first by reporting from the front in the Afghan war.
He wrote about Soviet GIs, only a few years younger than he, in a gritty, clear and profoundly moving way that was a revelation in a country accustomed to gray propaganda.
Artyom moved on to television, co-hosting the country's first real experiment in alternative journalism. The weekly program was called Vzglyad, one of those wonderful Russian words that has no equivalent in English but encompasses the meaning of "look, glance, gaze, stare, view, opinion."
In the American kaleidoscope of 100 cable channels, it's difficult to appreciate the impact of Vzglyad, carried by state television and watched by perhaps 90 percent of the country. Imagine a Super Bowl audience times two, weekly, and the subject is politics.
As Artyom and his colleagues debated perestroika, interviewed government officials on live television and exposed scandals, they literally heaved Soviet journalism into a new era. And the country was riveted.
CBS News and Artyom got together during the coup in August 1991, when he telephoned CBS News Anchor Dan Rather from inside the besieged Russian White House with live, almost hour-by-hour reports. (Artyom came to speak idiomatic American English when living in the United States with his father, who was a Soviet correspondent.)
It was a boffo combination: an English-speaking, telegenic Russian journalist who was his own man, prepared to explain his tortured country to the West.
60 Minutes grabbed him next, and Artyom did a series of reports as a special correspondent: inside the KGB; at nuclear missile launch facilities; and in a secret lab devoted to studying the physiognomy of the preserved brains of the communist pantheon. That story won him and his producer, George Crile, an Overseas Press Club award.
Artyom and I were thrown together in December 1991.
Several days before his resignation, Mikhail Gorbachev chose to grant his last interview as leader of the Soviet Union to Artyom and CBS News. It was a wholly surreal experience. We were led to his offices along dim corridors once home to Lenin and Stalin, the building deserted except for security and one or two aides. I told Artyom it reminded me of Nixon's last days in the White House, a comparison he used t describe the scene for Russian television.
Gorbachev was self-possessed and gracious - even though at the very hour we were meeting with him, the leaders of the Soviet republics were gathering in Alma-Ata to dissolve the Soviet Union, effectively removing him from power. Artyom asked questions first in English (for American television), then in Russian (for Gorbachev). He was a little nervous - as were we all - and I liked him for that. Celebrity had not destroyed his sense of wonder.
I sat in my apartment last night, watching the tributes to Artyom on Russian television, and occasionally watching myself, as excerpts of the Gorbachev interview were replayed. So much has changed since then, not least Russian television itself.
The coverage of the crash has been impressive in every way: interviews with investigators seeking the cause; with officials of the charter company that owned the plane; with the plane's manufacturer; with Artyom's family and colleagues; live reports from the scene.
Ten years ago, the report would have been a short report, likely read by the anchor, with little elaboration. But it is a different world, and Artyom was responsible for so much of it.
In the last few years, Artyom continued to expose scandal and corruption with his TV program and eponymous newspaper, Top Secret, and as Russia is given to viewing the world darkly, many speculate the crash was not an accident, though there is as yet no evidence that that is the case. I prefer to think it was an accident, if only because it is too painful to believe that this champion of a reborn Russia would be one of its victims.
He will be buried in Moscow's Novodievichy Cemetery, where Gogol, Khruschev and other historical figures lie. Artyom probably would have been a little abashed about it, this TV star who spoke American slang with the best of them, at home in both his world and ours, but in the end, a son of Russia.
Written By MARK KATKOV
©2000, CBS Worldwide Inc., All Rights Reserved