(, , ''The Businessman'' or Commerce Man, often shortened to Ъ) is a nationally distributed daily newspaper published in

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

mostly devoted to politics and business. The TNS Media and NRS Russia certified July 2013 circulation of the daily was 120,000–130,000. It is widely considered to be one of Russia's three main business dailies (together with ''

Vedomosti ( rus, Ведомости, p=ˈvʲedəməsʲtʲɪ, ) is a Russian-language business daily newspaper published in Moscow. History was founded in 1999 as a joint venture between Dow Jones, who publishes ''The Wall Street Journal''; Pearson, ...

'' and '' RBK Daily'').

History

The original ''Kommersant'' newspaper was established in Moscow in 1909, but was shut down by the

Bolsheviks The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

following the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

in 1917. In 1989, with the onset of press freedom in Russia, was relaunched under the ownership of businessman and publicist Vladimir Yakovlev. The first issue was released in January 1990. It was modeled after Western

business journalism Business journalism is the part of journalism that tracks, records, analyzes, and interprets the business sector, business, Economy, economic and finance, financial activities and changes that take place in societies. wikt:topic, Topics widely c ...

. The newspaper's title is spelled in Russian with a terminal

hard sign The letter Ъ ъ (italics ) of the Cyrillic script is known as er golyam ( – "big er") in the Bulgarian alphabet, as the hard sign (, , ) in the modern Russian and Rusyn alphabets (although in Rusyn, ъ could also be known as ір), as t ...

(ъ) – a letter that is silent at the end of a word in modern Russian, and was thus largely abolished by the post-revolution Russian spelling reform, in reference to the original ''Kommersant''. This is played up in the logo, which features a script hard sign at the end of somewhat more formal font. The newspaper also refers to itself or its redaction as "Ъ". Founded as a

weekly newspaper Weekly newspaper is a general-news or Current affairs (news format), current affairs publication that is issued once or twice a week in a wide variety broadsheet, magazine, and electronic publishing, digital formats. Similarly, a biweekly newspap ...

, it became popular among business and political elites. It then became a daily newspaper in 1992. It was owned by the businessman Boris Berezovsky from 1999 until 2006, when he sold it to

Badri Patarkatsishvili Arkady Shalvovich "Badri" Patarkatsishvili ( ka, ბადრი პატარკაციშვილი; ; 31 October 1955 – 12 February 2008) was a Georgian businessman who also became extensively involved in politics. He contested the 2 ...

. In September 2006, it was sold to Alisher Usmanov. In January 2005, published a protest at a court ruling ordering it to publish a denial of a story about a crisis at Alfa-Bank. In 2008, ''

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

'' named one of Russia's leading liberal business broadsheets. It has been argued that ''Kommersant'' strategically uses an ironic tone in its reporting, expressed in "creative

neologisms In linguistics, a neologism (; also known as a coinage) is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered ...

, wordplay, metaphors, and legally imposed

euphemisms A euphemism ( ) is when an expression that could offend or imply something unpleasant is replaced with one that is agreeable or inoffensive. Some euphemisms are intended to amuse, while others use bland, inoffensive terms for concepts that the u ...

," allowing it to maintain a degree of independence in periods of severe state censorship.

References

External links

BBC news reporting on Kommersant's protest

Photo gallery celebrating Kommersant's 15th anniversary

Story in the St. Petersburg Times about the sale of Kommersant
(archived)
"Kommersant" (1909–1917) digital archives in "Newspapers on the web and beyond"
the digital resource of the National Library of Russia {{Authority control Newspapers established in 1989 Russian-language newspapers published in Russia Business newspapers Mass media in Moscow