Pravda (the Slavic word for truth) is the name of a famous Russian newspaper. Officially founded in 1912 (other Pravdas existed before that however, the newspaper was shut down several times on the Pre-Revolution times), it was a publication of the Soviet Communist Party and, as such, it became a state-owned newspaper.
In August 22th 1991, a decree by Boris Yeltsin shut down the Party and seized all of its property, including the Pravda. Its team of journalists did not struggle for their newspaper or for its history. Instead, they registered a new paper with the same title just weeks after that.
The then-editor Gennady Seleznyov - nowadays a member of the Russian Parliament - , a few months after that, sold Pravda to a family of Greek entrepreneurs, the Yannikoses. The next editor-in-chief, Alexander Ilyin, handed Pravda's trademark - the Order of Lenin medals - and the new registration certificate over to the new owners.
By that time, a very serious split occurred in the editorial office. Over 90% of the journalists who had been working for Pravda until 1991 quit their jobs. They established their own version of the newspaper, which was later shut under government pressure. These same journalists, on January 1999, launched Pravda Online, the first web-based newspaper in the Russian language, which can be acessed at http://www.pravda.ru/. English and Portuguese versions are also avaiable.
The new Pravda newspaper and Pravda Online are not anyway related, despite the fact that the journalists of both publications are still in touch with each other. The paper Pravda tends to analyse events from a leftist point of view, while the web-based newspaper often takes a Nationalist approach.
Source: http://english.pravda.ru/about_en.htmld
Pravda (the Slavic word for truth) is also the name of a newspaper in Slovakia, which in the past was the Slovak equivalent of the above Russian newspaper. Founded in 1945 (other Pravdas existing before [in 1925-1932, 1944] were shut down), it was a publication of the Communist Party of Slovakia and, as such, it became a state-owned newspaper. Its equivalent in Czechia was the Rudé právo.
After the Velvet revolution it became the newspaper of the Social Democratic succession party of the Communist Party of Slovakia for a while.
Today, it is a modern neutral newspaper and one of the main newspapers in Slovakia.External Link
