The Soviet Weekly was a propagandistic newspaper, published from 1942 until 1991, that gave news of the Soviet Union in English. Its stated aim was "to assist in the development of British-Soviet friendship by providing an objective picture of Soviet life and opinion."[1]
Published by Sovinformburo,[2] the Press Department of the Soviet Union, at the Soviet Embassy in Britain,[3][4] its first edition (as the Soviet War News Weekly)[2] appeared in 1942 (the year after the German invasion led to the USSR becoming an ally of the UK). The final issue was that of 5 December 1991,[5] three weeks before the Soviet Union was dissolved.
Issued on Thursdays and offering "an up-to-the-minute and authentic picture of the USSR",[1] it had a modest cover price (6d, or two and a half pence, in 1967),[6] but most issues were distributed free.[3] In 1946, the weekly print-run was 75,000.[7]
One of its early editors was the screenwriter, novelist and (later) pagan, Stewart Farrar (1916-2000). Mary Rosser-Hicks (1937-2010), the future chief executive of the Peoples Printing Press socialist daily the Morning Star, worked for the paper until 1975,[8] as did South African anti-apartheid activist Shanthie Naidoo during the early 1970s.[9]
Soviet and Russian photographer Yuriy Abramochkin worked in Soviet Weekly for almost 40 years.[10]