They Called It Propaganda. He Called It a Conversation.

Vladimir Pozner connected Soviet and American citizens in 1986 on why it could never happen now

Dear readers and subscribers,

Vladimir Pozner may be unknown to many of you, especially if you're in your 20s or 30s. He is one of the most unusual figures in modern media history.

Born in Paris in 1934 to a Russian father and French mother, he grew up between New York and Moscow, becoming fluent in both English and Russian at a time when the two countries could barely speak to each other at all.

During the Cold War he became the Soviet Union’s most recognizable English-language spokesman, appearing regularly on American television as a calm, articulate voice from behind the Iron Curtain—an experience that made him famous in the US even as it made him suspect in some Russian circles.

After the Soviet collapse, he reinvented himself as one of Russia’s most prominent TV journalists and talk show hosts, a career he has sustained for decades. In the West he is perhaps best remembered for his partnership with Phil Donahue, the American broadcaster, with whom he co-hosted a series of groundbreaking US-Soviet television exchanges in the late 1980s—including the 1986 Leningrad-Seattle teleconference he discusses below.

He has never been without critics: some in the West view him as too accommodating of the Kremlin’s positions, while some in Russia consider him too Western.

He tends to wear both criticisms as a kind of credential.