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Editorial Note: Declining Interest/Growing Importance

If making the headlines is a measure of interest, it is not necessarily an index of the level of importance. Ten years ago, The New York Times featured special sections of up to four or five full pages under such headings as "Evolution in Europe." In contrast, today's reportage is limited to single columns. News from the Russian Federation, the Central Asian Republics and individual East European countries is, at best, sporadic and dysjuncted. Clearly, interest has waned according to editorial policy. But does that mean the importance of the news has declined commensurably? Thanks to geo-strategic considerations, the Soviet Union and the cluster of states subservient to it in Eastern Europe were of obvious concern to politicians, policymakers, and academics alike. No-one questioned that a change in the Kremlin, a shift in oil and gas production in Central Asia, a samizdat statement by a dissident anywhere in the Soviet bloc, or a strike and demonstration by miners or mothers of soldiers drafted to fight in Afghanistan was not of critical interest and, therefore, of some significance. Hence, by and large, this information was disseminated by the media, on the editorial assumption it needed to be circulated and commented upon. The break-up of the Soviet empire and its satellite system attracted dramatic numbers of observers, many who had previously paid little attention to this part of the world other than in very broad and general terms. From about 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev's ascent to power till the collapse of the Berlin Wall, specialists and the public at large were riveted to their TV screens and/or voraciously ingesting long newspaper reports of the on-going denouement of the Soviet order, culminating in the miraculously (almost anti-climatic), non-violent demise of the USSR. Thereafter, the media coverage visibly declined. Individual events sparked momentary attention if not interest and were on occasion infused with editorial "meaning": for example, suspicions about Boris Yeltsin's health; the violence of the crack-up of Yugoslavia; and, of course, the tragic war in Chechnya. With but few exceptions, these events were presented for their drama rather than for their on-going significance. For example, now that the fighting has ceased in Chechnya, the country has fallen beyond the media's reach: the convoluted and dangerous almost daily negotiations between Grozny and Moscow are left unreported-although a kidnapping here and there is given an inside, 3-4 sentence by-line. The overall impact of Chechnya on the dynamics of the continuing weakening of the Russian Federation's central authority in the face of rising regional (cum ethnic) centrifugal power is totally ignored as if it had no bearing on the U.S. The same can be said of the international struggle for control over gas and oil in the Caspian region. Once a