#Media
The Moscow Times
Russian edition of Cosmopolitan
Derk Sauer is a Dutch-born publisher who became one of the founders of independent media in post-Soviet Russia. He moved to Moscow in 1988 as editor of the joint venture Moscow Magazine, the first glossy magazine for foreigners in the USSR. In 1992 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he founded Moscow Times as one of the first independent English language news outlets. In 1994, he and his wife Ellen launched the Russian version of Cosmopolitan, under license from the Hearst Corporation, with Ellen as the editor-in-chief. The magazine quickly became the most popular publication for young Russian women and pioneered the advertising industry. By 1997, the Sauers had launched Russian licensed versions of Harper’s Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, Playboy, and Men’s Health. Then in 1999, Sauer launched the first independent Russian language business newspaper, Vedomosti, as a joint venture with Financial Times and New York Times. Vedomosti became the newspaper of record for Russian business until the Russian government began to impose limits foreign ownership and reassert its control over Russian media.
The Moscow Times
Russian edition of Cosmopolitan
Derk Sauer is a Dutch-born publisher who became one of the founders of independent media in post-Soviet Russia. He moved to Moscow in 1988 as editor of the joint venture Moscow Magazine, the first glossy magazine for foreigners in the USSR. In 1992 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he founded Moscow Times as one of the first independent English language news outlets. In 1994, he and his wife Ellen launched the Russian version of Cosmopolitan, under license from the Hearst Corporation, with Ellen as the editor-in-chief. The magazine quickly became the most popular publication for young Russian women and pioneered the advertising industry. By 1997, the Sauers had launched Russian licensed versions of Harper’s Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, Playboy, and Men’s Health. Then in 1999, Sauer launched the first independent Russian language business newspaper, Vedomosti, as a joint venture with Financial Times and New York Times. Vedomosti became the newspaper of record for Russian business until the Russian government began to impose limits foreign ownership and reassert its control over Russian media.
Daniel Satinsky: Could you start by telling me how you became involved? I read the Wikipedia page about the Moscow Times, which I found confusing.
Derk Sauer: It is pretty confusing. I always tell myself to ask someone to redo it properly, but I always forget. Let me tell you something. I'm a journalist from Holland, and my background is in journalism. I was editor in chief of a weekly magazine in the Netherlands for about eight, nine years. I told my boss that I wanted to look around for something new. Around the same time, a delegation of the Russian Union of Journalists visited the Netherlands and toured publishing houses. They came to our well-known magazine, and this was the first time I met Russians.
Daniel Satinsky: What year was this?
Derk Sauer: This was in 1988.
Daniel Satinsky: Late perestroika?
Derk Sauer: Yes, it was perestroika time. I have a very left-wing background. Since childhood, I was a member of the Dutch Marxist-Leninist movement, funny enough, the pro-China faction.
Daniel Satinsky: I remember.
Derk Sauer: So I was a well-known radical in the Netherlands. I started talking to these guys, and they were excited about what was going on in Russia. They said, why don't you come to Russia? We want to start a new publication. They were obviously looking for money. I was following the news about Gorbachev, perestroika, and glasnost. I thought maybe this could be interesting. I was looking for a new horizon, and I have a background in war journalism. I have traveled around the world. I'd been in the Netherlands for about eight years, married with a small child. My wife wasn't too crazy about me going back to war journalism, but this seemed like a good alternative. It was exciting but not a war.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: I took the idea to my bosses at VNU, a big Dutch publishing group. They were intrigued by the idea. New market opening up and so on. They said, well, you're a communist, so you probably know how to deal with this. That's how it started. I traveled to Moscow. My first visit coincided with the first big rock concert organized in Luzhniki Stadium. Bon Jovi was there. Some other big names too.t was very big. The first big rock concert in Luzhniki.
Daniel Satinsky: There's a podcast about the Scorpions and whether or not the song "Winds of Change" was written by the CIA. You know this, right?
Derk Sauer: I didn’t know this. Interesting.
Daniel Satinsky: It's a long podcast about this, involving that concert. If you want, I'll send you a reference.
Derk Sauer: Yeah, that sounds interesting. So, from the moment I landed in Moscow, I was fascinated by the place. I told my wife, let's go to Moscow. We had a seven-month-old baby, so she was a little shocked. But she is also adventurous and Dutch, so we decided to go. Of course, when I arrived, I quickly found out I was naive about Russia. These so-called journalists were in fact old KGB guys.In those days, you could only start something in the form of a joint venture, like in China. You had to team up with a local state organization.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: We did this joint venture, and the first project I launched was called Moscow Magazine.
Daniel Satinsky: Okay.
Derk Sauer: It was the first glossy magazine ever published in Russia.
Daniel Satinsky: This was a joint venture of your Dutch publishing group and?
Derk Sauer: The Russian Union of Journalists.
Daniel Satinsky: So you were representing the Dutch publishing group?
Derk Sauer: Yes, that's how I came.
Daniel Satinsky: And this glossy journal was for distribution in hotels, I assume?
Derk Sauer: Yes, it had both English and Russian language editions. English edition was distributed in hotels, and the Russian edition in kiosks. It was basically New York Magazine but in Russia.
Daniel Satinsky: So it was a high-level, thoughtful journal.
Derk Sauer: Right. We had some very good contributors. I invited famous journalists from the U.S. to visit Russia and write about what they saw. It was quite an interesting magazine. But it was not a commercial enterprise because the magazine was printed in the Netherlands in hard currency and sold in Russia in rubles during hyperinflation. The ruble was worth nothing. The journalists from the Union of Journalists were not real journalists, so they didn't contribute anything.
Daniel Satinsky: What were they trying to do? Why did they want this?
Derk Sauer: They wanted to make money. It was the beginning of glasnost and perestroika. They had this crazy idea that working with a foreign company would make them rich. The first thing they asked was when do we go on vacation and what kind of car can we buy. It was funny, but in those days, everything they thought capitalism meant.They had this image of the guy with a big cigar and dollar bills coming out of his pocket.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: They thought working for an international company meant they wouldn't have to work at all.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: It was difficult for me because they were useless, but at the same time, it was endearing to see the naivety of those early days. They quickly realized that capitalism is complicated—you have to get up early, work hard, and maybe then you make some money.
Daniel Satinsky: How long did that magazine exist?
Derk Sauer: About one and a half years.
Daniel Satinsky: What years are we talking about?
Derk Sauer: It was launched in the spring of 1990 and ran until the beginning of 1992.
Daniel Satinsky: So, by the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, was it still around?
Derk Sauer: Yes, it was right around the dissolution when Yeltsin climbed on the tanks.
Daniel Satinsky: Did you cover those events as a journalist?
Derk Sauer: We covered it somewhat in the magazine, but it was a monthly publication. I was the only Dutch journalist in Moscow at the time, so I became the de facto correspondent for all Dutch media—television, radio, newspapers. I was covering those events more as a correspondent than in the magazine due to its long deadlines.
Daniel Satinsky: As a person with your political background as a communist, how did you feel about the dissolution of the Soviet Union?
Derk Sauer: Coming to Russia from Holland, my friends and people I met would tell horror stories about their families and the gulags. It was the first time they could talk about it openly. Within a couple of weeks, I realized the whole idea of communism was a total scheme and a flop. I knew about Stalin, but as a young man in Holland, we were caught up in the Vietnam movement and anti-colonialism. But in Russia, hearing personal stories and seeing the conditions—cockroach-infested apartments, empty stores, no bread or fuel—it was a crash course in the failure of communism.
Daniel Satinsky: So you were able to join in the enthusiastic optimism of the time, something new being born?
Derk Sauer: Yes. Apart from the Union of Journalists, I had one other contact in Moscow: Artemi Troitsky. He was a well-known journalist and media guy, chronicling the rock and roll scene in Russia. He was a cult figure and introduced me to the Russian alternative scene, young journalists, real writers, intellectuals. I stopped working with the Union of Journalists and created a whole new team with Troitsky and his friends.
Daniel Satinsky: I see. That integrated you more into Russian life?
Derk Sauer: Exactly. He introduced me to the interesting aspects of Russian life.
Daniel Satinsky: And I assume that was all in English because you didn't speak Russian at that point.
Derk Sauer: When I arrived, I didn't speak a word of Russian.
Daniel Satinsky: It was hard to get around without knowing Russian. Right?
Derk Sauer: Very hard.
Daniel Satinsky: On a living level, where did you and your wife shop? Did you use the hard currency stores?
Derk Sauer: Somewhat. There were only one or two. Because we had a small baby, we needed things like milk powder and diapers, which were not available. We shipped them in from Holland.
Daniel Satinsky: I remember traveling there in those years with huge suitcases because I couldn't purchase much locally.
Derk Sauer: It was tough. Getting up at 4 a.m. to get petrol for the car. But it was extremely romantic. There was such a good vibe in those days, like the future was bright, peace was coming.
Daniel Satinsky: When the magazine went under, who pulled the plug? Your Dutch publisher?
Derk Sauer: Yes. They had bought a big company in the U.S. and switched focus there. They liked what I did but didn't see it becoming a business. But we liked Moscow, and I had started a little newsletter for the foreign community—where to shop, what to do. It got good feedback because there was no information available at the time. This gave me the idea to start the Moscow Times, an English-language newspaper. I made a business plan and went to my bosses, but they said, "It's not our business to fulfill your dreams."
Daniel Satinsky: Out of curiosity, when you did that business plan, what was your estimate of potential readers?
Derk Sauer: It is pretty confusing. I always tell myself to ask someone to redo it properly, but I always forget. Let me tell you something. I'm a journalist from Holland, and my background is in journalism. I was editor in chief of a weekly magazine in the Netherlands for about eight, nine years. I told my boss that I wanted to look around for something new. Around the same time, a delegation of the Russian Union of Journalists visited the Netherlands and toured publishing houses. They came to our well-known magazine, and this was the first time I met Russians.
Daniel Satinsky: What year was this?
Derk Sauer: This was in 1988.
Daniel Satinsky: Late perestroika?
Derk Sauer: Yes, it was perestroika time. I have a very left-wing background. Since childhood, I was a member of the Dutch Marxist-Leninist movement, funny enough, the pro-China faction.
Daniel Satinsky: I remember.
Derk Sauer: So I was a well-known radical in the Netherlands. I started talking to these guys, and they were excited about what was going on in Russia. They said, why don't you come to Russia? We want to start a new publication. They were obviously looking for money. I was following the news about Gorbachev, perestroika, and glasnost. I thought maybe this could be interesting. I was looking for a new horizon, and I have a background in war journalism. I have traveled around the world. I'd been in the Netherlands for about eight years, married with a small child. My wife wasn't too crazy about me going back to war journalism, but this seemed like a good alternative. It was exciting but not a war.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: I took the idea to my bosses at VNU, a big Dutch publishing group. They were intrigued by the idea. New market opening up and so on. They said, well, you're a communist, so you probably know how to deal with this. That's how it started. I traveled to Moscow. My first visit coincided with the first big rock concert organized in Luzhniki Stadium. Bon Jovi was there. Some other big names too.t was very big. The first big rock concert in Luzhniki.
Daniel Satinsky: There's a podcast about the Scorpions and whether or not the song "Winds of Change" was written by the CIA. You know this, right?
Derk Sauer: I didn’t know this. Interesting.
Daniel Satinsky: It's a long podcast about this, involving that concert. If you want, I'll send you a reference.
Derk Sauer: Yeah, that sounds interesting. So, from the moment I landed in Moscow, I was fascinated by the place. I told my wife, let's go to Moscow. We had a seven-month-old baby, so she was a little shocked. But she is also adventurous and Dutch, so we decided to go. Of course, when I arrived, I quickly found out I was naive about Russia. These so-called journalists were in fact old KGB guys.In those days, you could only start something in the form of a joint venture, like in China. You had to team up with a local state organization.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: We did this joint venture, and the first project I launched was called Moscow Magazine.
Daniel Satinsky: Okay.
Derk Sauer: It was the first glossy magazine ever published in Russia.
Daniel Satinsky: This was a joint venture of your Dutch publishing group and?
Derk Sauer: The Russian Union of Journalists.
Daniel Satinsky: So you were representing the Dutch publishing group?
Derk Sauer: Yes, that's how I came.
Daniel Satinsky: And this glossy journal was for distribution in hotels, I assume?
Derk Sauer: Yes, it had both English and Russian language editions. English edition was distributed in hotels, and the Russian edition in kiosks. It was basically New York Magazine but in Russia.
Daniel Satinsky: So it was a high-level, thoughtful journal.
Derk Sauer: Right. We had some very good contributors. I invited famous journalists from the U.S. to visit Russia and write about what they saw. It was quite an interesting magazine. But it was not a commercial enterprise because the magazine was printed in the Netherlands in hard currency and sold in Russia in rubles during hyperinflation. The ruble was worth nothing. The journalists from the Union of Journalists were not real journalists, so they didn't contribute anything.
Daniel Satinsky: What were they trying to do? Why did they want this?
Derk Sauer: They wanted to make money. It was the beginning of glasnost and perestroika. They had this crazy idea that working with a foreign company would make them rich. The first thing they asked was when do we go on vacation and what kind of car can we buy. It was funny, but in those days, everything they thought capitalism meant.They had this image of the guy with a big cigar and dollar bills coming out of his pocket.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: They thought working for an international company meant they wouldn't have to work at all.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: It was difficult for me because they were useless, but at the same time, it was endearing to see the naivety of those early days. They quickly realized that capitalism is complicated—you have to get up early, work hard, and maybe then you make some money.
Daniel Satinsky: How long did that magazine exist?
Derk Sauer: About one and a half years.
Daniel Satinsky: What years are we talking about?
Derk Sauer: It was launched in the spring of 1990 and ran until the beginning of 1992.
Daniel Satinsky: So, by the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, was it still around?
Derk Sauer: Yes, it was right around the dissolution when Yeltsin climbed on the tanks.
Daniel Satinsky: Did you cover those events as a journalist?
Derk Sauer: We covered it somewhat in the magazine, but it was a monthly publication. I was the only Dutch journalist in Moscow at the time, so I became the de facto correspondent for all Dutch media—television, radio, newspapers. I was covering those events more as a correspondent than in the magazine due to its long deadlines.
Daniel Satinsky: As a person with your political background as a communist, how did you feel about the dissolution of the Soviet Union?
Derk Sauer: Coming to Russia from Holland, my friends and people I met would tell horror stories about their families and the gulags. It was the first time they could talk about it openly. Within a couple of weeks, I realized the whole idea of communism was a total scheme and a flop. I knew about Stalin, but as a young man in Holland, we were caught up in the Vietnam movement and anti-colonialism. But in Russia, hearing personal stories and seeing the conditions—cockroach-infested apartments, empty stores, no bread or fuel—it was a crash course in the failure of communism.
Daniel Satinsky: So you were able to join in the enthusiastic optimism of the time, something new being born?
Derk Sauer: Yes. Apart from the Union of Journalists, I had one other contact in Moscow: Artemi Troitsky. He was a well-known journalist and media guy, chronicling the rock and roll scene in Russia. He was a cult figure and introduced me to the Russian alternative scene, young journalists, real writers, intellectuals. I stopped working with the Union of Journalists and created a whole new team with Troitsky and his friends.
Daniel Satinsky: I see. That integrated you more into Russian life?
Derk Sauer: Exactly. He introduced me to the interesting aspects of Russian life.
Daniel Satinsky: And I assume that was all in English because you didn't speak Russian at that point.
Derk Sauer: When I arrived, I didn't speak a word of Russian.
Daniel Satinsky: It was hard to get around without knowing Russian. Right?
Derk Sauer: Very hard.
Daniel Satinsky: On a living level, where did you and your wife shop? Did you use the hard currency stores?
Derk Sauer: Somewhat. There were only one or two. Because we had a small baby, we needed things like milk powder and diapers, which were not available. We shipped them in from Holland.
Daniel Satinsky: I remember traveling there in those years with huge suitcases because I couldn't purchase much locally.
Derk Sauer: It was tough. Getting up at 4 a.m. to get petrol for the car. But it was extremely romantic. There was such a good vibe in those days, like the future was bright, peace was coming.
Daniel Satinsky: When the magazine went under, who pulled the plug? Your Dutch publisher?
Derk Sauer: Yes. They had bought a big company in the U.S. and switched focus there. They liked what I did but didn't see it becoming a business. But we liked Moscow, and I had started a little newsletter for the foreign community—where to shop, what to do. It got good feedback because there was no information available at the time. This gave me the idea to start the Moscow Times, an English-language newspaper. I made a business plan and went to my bosses, but they said, "It's not our business to fulfill your dreams."
Daniel Satinsky: Out of curiosity, when you did that business plan, what was your estimate of potential readers?
Derk Sauer: We estimated about 30,000 expats in Moscow in 1992. Expats were streaming in, with new companies registering subsidiaries every week. This was Yeltsin time.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: The laws were changed so that people could set up their own businesses. You didn't have to do joint ventures anymore, which really opened the gates for foreign companies.
Daniel Satinsky: Right, right. So you were making this pitch to your publishing house that foreigners were flooding in and there was a unique opportunity, but they thought it was too small and too little money.
Derk Sauer: Yes, they said, "A daily newspaper? What are you thinking?" I understood them, but I thought it was funny. They said, "We're not in the business to fulfill your dreams."
Daniel Satinsky: So you went out to fulfill your dreams yourself, then, right?
Derk Sauer: Exactly. I had a very good friend in the Netherlands. We were both part of the trade union of conscript soldiers, which was unique in Holland. This friend of mine had made some money, and I had some savings. Our first investment was about €50,000. We went to the Slovianski hotel, which was managed by Paul Tatum.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: At that time, the hotel was still empty. I proposed to Paul that if he gave us a number of hotel rooms for our offices, we would advertise the Sloviansk hotel in exchange. In those days, everything was barter. Paul agreed, so we set up our offices in several hotel rooms. We bought two second-hand vans in Amsterdam, filled them with Apple computers, and drove them to Moscow. We were the first to bring Apple computers to Russia.
Daniel Satinsky: Wow.
Derk Sauer: Officially, it wasn't even allowed because there was still a ban on bringing technology to Russia, but we just drove them in. One of the vans broke down about 100 or 200 km before Moscow, so the other had to pull it the rest of the way. We arrived at the Slovianski hotel, set up with a mix of Russian and American staff, and a designer from Holland because no one in Russia knew how to work with Apple computers. We had a problem, though, because we had to print the newspaper.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: So we went to Pravda. The director laughed when I told him we wanted to print 25,000 copies because Pravda printed millions. But I convinced him by saying this was the future of newspaper publishing, and we would pay in hard currency if necessary. He asked if I was from Holland and mentioned that they wanted to make cheese because they had cows. He said if I helped them make cheese, he would print our newspaper. So I brought in some experts from Holland to advise them, and they started printing our newspaper.
Daniel Satinsky: Wow. And suddenly, the 25,000 run wasn't such a big problem for them because they got something they wanted.
Derk Sauer: Exactly. Those were amazing days.
Daniel Satinsky: And what was your business model? Was it advertising?
Derk Sauer: Yes, free circulation funded by advertising. Expats had the hard currency, and they were the rich people around. Restaurants, travel shops, and other businesses found it interesting to advertise to them. Job opportunities became a big part of it because foreign companies needed English-speaking Russian employees.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: Most of our readers were Russian because it was a good tool for them to connect with Western companies. But my forecasts were too optimistic. We struggled for two years, and it was critical. We had to sell our house in Amsterdam to keep it going.
Daniel Satinsky: You sold your house in Amsterdam?
Derk Sauer: Yes, my wife Ellen said we should start a women's magazine because there were only two women's magazines in Russia at the time—The Farmer's Woman and The Working Woman. Those magazines were exactly what you might think. So we started thinking about a women's magazine, and I suggested Cosmopolitan. We chased Hearst all over the world to get the license for Cosmopolitan, which was tough because they had done a joint venture with Izvestia, which was a disaster.
Daniel Satinsky: Under the name of Cosmo?
Derk Sauer: No, this was before we approached them. They had a bad experience with Izvestia and were very skeptical, but we convinced them. Launching Cosmopolitan in 1994 saved us. The Moscow Times was launched in 1992, and Cosmopolitan two years later.
Daniel Satinsky: So you launched Cosmopolitan under license from Hearst?
Derk Sauer: Yes, in a joint venture.
Daniel Satinsky: Who provided the content?
Derk Sauer: We used most photography and some articles from Cosmopolitan, but from the beginning, we created a lot of our own Russian content. The Russian lifestyle was so different that we couldn't just translate articles; we had to find our own angle.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: The topics were the same—fashion, sex, lifestyle.
Daniel Satinsky: And Cosmopolitan was sold at kiosks and newsstands?
Derk Sauer: Yes, Cosmopolitan basically created the magazine market in Russia. There were no modern magazines or efficient distribution systems. We put ads in the newspaper and sold boxes of magazines. It was such a sensation that young people would buy a box, sell them at the metro, and then come back for more. The first edition was 50,000 copies, but within a year, it grew to almost a million copies a month.
Daniel Satinsky: Wow.
Derk Sauer: Some of those young people became the biggest distributors of magazines in Russia. They started small and then expanded, creating a whole new distribution system. The same can be said of the advertising industry; there was no fashion industry, no photographers, no designers. Everything was built on the success of Cosmopolitan.
Daniel Satinsky: It sparked a resurgence of fashion and related industries.
Derk Sauer: Yes, we had issues with 800 pages, with 500 to 600 pages of advertisements.
Daniel Satinsky: Really?
Derk Sauer: Yes, it was very profitable.
Daniel Satinsky: And at that time, you didn't have any competitors?
Derk Sauer: For about three years, we had no real competitors. We knew this wouldn't last forever, so we launched our own competitors like Harper's Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, Playboy, and Men's Health. About three or four years after we launched Cosmopolitan, Elle came to the market as our first real competitor.
Daniel Satinsky: Elle from France?
Derk Sauer: Yes, from France.
Daniel Satinsky: You followed the same model, getting licenses or joint ventures with foreign partners?
Derk Sauer: Yes, some were licenses, some were joint ventures.
Daniel Satinsky [00:46:28] You must have had a dramatically expanding staff of journalists, writers, and editors.
Derk Sauer: Yes, the Moscow Times was just a small part of our operation. It became great, but these magazines were so profitable that we could afford to keep the Moscow Times going.
Daniel Satinsky: So the Moscow Times was like your baby, and the other magazines were the real business.
Derk Sauer: Absolutely. But Cosmopolitan was extremely important for Russia. It was the first to openly write about sex, relationships, and domestic violence. We had letters from readers saying Cosmopolitan empowered them to make significant changes in their lives.
Daniel Satinsky: Wow.
Derk Sauer: We wrote extensively about issues like abortion, which was a common method of birth control. Cosmopolitan was a bible for young women in Russia, and its impact cannot be overstated. It deserves a separate study.
Daniel Satinsky: I agree. This era is impossible to convey in one book, but I'm hoping to lay some breadcrumbs for future researchers to study this period.
Derk Sauer: Yes, we launched one magazine after another and grew from 20 people to over a thousand employees in a couple of years.
Daniel Satinsky: Did you move to your own building?
Derk Sauer: First, we moved from Slovianski to another location as the hotel became a real hotel. We became neighbors with Komsomolskaya Pravda in the heart of the Soviet press district, taking over a huge space that was the former accounting department of Pravda. As we grew more, we rented an entire office building.
Daniel Satinsky: I have about ten questions in my mind at once, so let me slow down and ask them properly. What was the name of the parent company behind all these ventures?
Derk Sauer: The company was owned by myself and my friend. We called it Independent Media.
Daniel Satinsky: Independent Media. Okay. So you were consciously blazing a new trail for media in Russia. Could you talk a bit about the others who followed behind you, particularly in the newspaper space?
Derk Sauer: In the newspaper space, there was one other very important newspaper, Kommersant. They did on the newspaper side what we did on the magazine side. Kommersant was started by Vladimir Yakovlev, the grandson of the famous Yakovlev, the partner of Gorbachev. He came up with the idea to make a newspaper for the new emerging Russian business class. The newspaper was independent, not linked to any state organizations, and the writing was much more eclectic and lively. It became the bible for the emerging middle class, capturing the spirit of the time.
Daniel Satinsky: By 1996-98, how many expats would you estimate were in Moscow?
Derk Sauer: At the peak, we estimated between 50,000 and 60,000 expats of all nationalities.
Daniel Satinsky: What about the Moscow News started by the Indian guy?
Derk Sauer: That was the Moscow Tribune, not Moscow News. Moscow News was an old Soviet publication, very popular during glasnost. The Moscow Tribune, started by the Indian guy, wasn't as good in solid journalism. We had a very good team of journalists, like Mick Borden from the Herald Tribune, Steve Liesman, Lynn Berry, and others who went on to become famous in their fields.
Daniel Satinsky: So this was a launching pad for young journalists?
Derk Sauer: Yes, we called it a small newspaper about the big story. Even now, our coverage, for instance about COVID in Russia, is unrivaled and quoted all over the world. In those early days without the internet, we had a team of very ambitious young people.
Daniel Satinsky: Did you cover events like the 1993 White House bombing, the 1996 Yeltsin election, and the 1998 financial crisis?
Derk Sauer: Yes, we covered everything.
Daniel Satinsky: What about The Exile? What was your opinion about it?
Derk Sauer: They were quite talented but definitely over the top. They saw us as boring and old-fashioned journalists, but we were proud of that. We focused on balanced, correct, and double-checked journalism, unlike their gonzo style.The Exile was also very sexist.
Daniel Satinsky: Yes, they were. They were never really a competitor but catered to a certain section of the expat community.They were associated with places like the Hungry Duck.
Derk Sauer: Yes, places like that. Our scene was people in the expat community who worked hard to build businesses, Russians interested in joining foreign companies, and good solid journalism.
Daniel Satinsky: Did your foreign staff members typically speak Russian?
Derk Sauer: Not in the first two years, but pretty soon it became a requirement. We got more people who were Russian studies graduates or from Russian backgrounds but attended American or European universities. Now, everyone in the newsroom speaks Russian.
Daniel Satinsky: You had to develop your own sources of information like traditional reporters?
Derk Sauer: Yes, and we maintained serious journalism over the years. Everything we write about is authoritative and no-nonsense.
Daniel Satinsky: I read the paper in those days because it was the best source of information for me. My Russian was fairly primitive.
Derk Sauer: Absolutely.
Daniel Satinsky: Were you close to other institutions like AmCham and the European Business Club?
Derk Sauer: We used their information but always tried to stay independent, similar to how newspapers in Boston or New York would relate to the local chamber of commerce.
Daniel Satinsky: So, okay, nothing particularly special. And what about the organization Internews? Did you have any interaction with them?
Derk Sauer: Yes, but that had nothing to do with the Moscow Times. They were very nice people, and for a while, we had our own training center. A big part of what we did was hire people and train them since we never hired established journalists. I knew that once people had gone through Russian journalism, it would be impossible to get them to write as we wanted. So, we hired fresh graduates from university—linguistics, arts, whatever—as long as they were young and energetic. We set up our own training institute for the basics of our style of journalism, and we did this for years. Internews was involved a little bit with us in training journalists from the regions.
Daniel Satinsky: Right. Their involvement was mostly with TV stations, as I understand it. I've spoken with several of those people. They also seemed to have an important effect on independent media.
Derk Sauer: Local TV stations.
Daniel Satinsky: So the magazines were the economic basis. For how long did you keep control of the magazines, or for how long were those part of your portfolio?
Derk Sauer: Let's not forget one of the most important things I did. When the Moscow Times was doing okay—not making real money, but doing okay—and we had these magazines, I always had this dream of starting a Russian-language newspaper.
Daniel Satinsky: Okay.
Derk Sauer: For a while, I thought about maybe the Moscow Times in Russian. But I saw that Kommersant, which started under Yakovlev as a new thing for the Russian middle class and business community, drifted away a little bit. Yakovlev left, and the famous oligarch, the Mercedes dealer who turned into an oligarch – Berezovsky, bought the paper from Yakovlev. Then it became an oligarch newspaper. I sensed there was a market there. So I came up with the idea to start a real serious business newspaper in Russia. I have big admiration for two newspapers in the world: the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. I wanted to do it with either the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: First, I went to the Financial Times in London. London is closer, and I met the chairman there. He was intrigued by the idea. Good idea, let's do it, and so on. But as these things go, you go back and send messages, and nothing really happened.
Daniel Satinsky: Yeah.
Derk Sauer: So I thought, well, then I'll go to the Wall Street Journal. I went to New York, met the chairman of the Wall Street Journal. Same thing—intriguing idea, blah, blah, blah—but nothing happened. At a certain point, I thought, what do I do? So I called them both and said, I have an idea. Why don't we do it all together? Because I sensed that, on the one hand, they wanted to go to Russia because Russia was not toxic yet at that time. At the same time, they were a little nervous about failure.
Daniel Satinsky: Yeah.
Derk Sauer: So I said, if it's a success, you both have the success. If it's a failure, you share the failure.
Daniel Satinsky: Right, right.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: The laws were changed so that people could set up their own businesses. You didn't have to do joint ventures anymore, which really opened the gates for foreign companies.
Daniel Satinsky: Right, right. So you were making this pitch to your publishing house that foreigners were flooding in and there was a unique opportunity, but they thought it was too small and too little money.
Derk Sauer: Yes, they said, "A daily newspaper? What are you thinking?" I understood them, but I thought it was funny. They said, "We're not in the business to fulfill your dreams."
Daniel Satinsky: So you went out to fulfill your dreams yourself, then, right?
Derk Sauer: Exactly. I had a very good friend in the Netherlands. We were both part of the trade union of conscript soldiers, which was unique in Holland. This friend of mine had made some money, and I had some savings. Our first investment was about €50,000. We went to the Slovianski hotel, which was managed by Paul Tatum.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: At that time, the hotel was still empty. I proposed to Paul that if he gave us a number of hotel rooms for our offices, we would advertise the Sloviansk hotel in exchange. In those days, everything was barter. Paul agreed, so we set up our offices in several hotel rooms. We bought two second-hand vans in Amsterdam, filled them with Apple computers, and drove them to Moscow. We were the first to bring Apple computers to Russia.
Daniel Satinsky: Wow.
Derk Sauer: Officially, it wasn't even allowed because there was still a ban on bringing technology to Russia, but we just drove them in. One of the vans broke down about 100 or 200 km before Moscow, so the other had to pull it the rest of the way. We arrived at the Slovianski hotel, set up with a mix of Russian and American staff, and a designer from Holland because no one in Russia knew how to work with Apple computers. We had a problem, though, because we had to print the newspaper.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: So we went to Pravda. The director laughed when I told him we wanted to print 25,000 copies because Pravda printed millions. But I convinced him by saying this was the future of newspaper publishing, and we would pay in hard currency if necessary. He asked if I was from Holland and mentioned that they wanted to make cheese because they had cows. He said if I helped them make cheese, he would print our newspaper. So I brought in some experts from Holland to advise them, and they started printing our newspaper.
Daniel Satinsky: Wow. And suddenly, the 25,000 run wasn't such a big problem for them because they got something they wanted.
Derk Sauer: Exactly. Those were amazing days.
Daniel Satinsky: And what was your business model? Was it advertising?
Derk Sauer: Yes, free circulation funded by advertising. Expats had the hard currency, and they were the rich people around. Restaurants, travel shops, and other businesses found it interesting to advertise to them. Job opportunities became a big part of it because foreign companies needed English-speaking Russian employees.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: Most of our readers were Russian because it was a good tool for them to connect with Western companies. But my forecasts were too optimistic. We struggled for two years, and it was critical. We had to sell our house in Amsterdam to keep it going.
Daniel Satinsky: You sold your house in Amsterdam?
Derk Sauer: Yes, my wife Ellen said we should start a women's magazine because there were only two women's magazines in Russia at the time—The Farmer's Woman and The Working Woman. Those magazines were exactly what you might think. So we started thinking about a women's magazine, and I suggested Cosmopolitan. We chased Hearst all over the world to get the license for Cosmopolitan, which was tough because they had done a joint venture with Izvestia, which was a disaster.
Daniel Satinsky: Under the name of Cosmo?
Derk Sauer: No, this was before we approached them. They had a bad experience with Izvestia and were very skeptical, but we convinced them. Launching Cosmopolitan in 1994 saved us. The Moscow Times was launched in 1992, and Cosmopolitan two years later.
Daniel Satinsky: So you launched Cosmopolitan under license from Hearst?
Derk Sauer: Yes, in a joint venture.
Daniel Satinsky: Who provided the content?
Derk Sauer: We used most photography and some articles from Cosmopolitan, but from the beginning, we created a lot of our own Russian content. The Russian lifestyle was so different that we couldn't just translate articles; we had to find our own angle.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: The topics were the same—fashion, sex, lifestyle.
Daniel Satinsky: And Cosmopolitan was sold at kiosks and newsstands?
Derk Sauer: Yes, Cosmopolitan basically created the magazine market in Russia. There were no modern magazines or efficient distribution systems. We put ads in the newspaper and sold boxes of magazines. It was such a sensation that young people would buy a box, sell them at the metro, and then come back for more. The first edition was 50,000 copies, but within a year, it grew to almost a million copies a month.
Daniel Satinsky: Wow.
Derk Sauer: Some of those young people became the biggest distributors of magazines in Russia. They started small and then expanded, creating a whole new distribution system. The same can be said of the advertising industry; there was no fashion industry, no photographers, no designers. Everything was built on the success of Cosmopolitan.
Daniel Satinsky: It sparked a resurgence of fashion and related industries.
Derk Sauer: Yes, we had issues with 800 pages, with 500 to 600 pages of advertisements.
Daniel Satinsky: Really?
Derk Sauer: Yes, it was very profitable.
Daniel Satinsky: And at that time, you didn't have any competitors?
Derk Sauer: For about three years, we had no real competitors. We knew this wouldn't last forever, so we launched our own competitors like Harper's Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, Playboy, and Men's Health. About three or four years after we launched Cosmopolitan, Elle came to the market as our first real competitor.
Daniel Satinsky: Elle from France?
Derk Sauer: Yes, from France.
Daniel Satinsky: You followed the same model, getting licenses or joint ventures with foreign partners?
Derk Sauer: Yes, some were licenses, some were joint ventures.
Daniel Satinsky [00:46:28] You must have had a dramatically expanding staff of journalists, writers, and editors.
Derk Sauer: Yes, the Moscow Times was just a small part of our operation. It became great, but these magazines were so profitable that we could afford to keep the Moscow Times going.
Daniel Satinsky: So the Moscow Times was like your baby, and the other magazines were the real business.
Derk Sauer: Absolutely. But Cosmopolitan was extremely important for Russia. It was the first to openly write about sex, relationships, and domestic violence. We had letters from readers saying Cosmopolitan empowered them to make significant changes in their lives.
Daniel Satinsky: Wow.
Derk Sauer: We wrote extensively about issues like abortion, which was a common method of birth control. Cosmopolitan was a bible for young women in Russia, and its impact cannot be overstated. It deserves a separate study.
Daniel Satinsky: I agree. This era is impossible to convey in one book, but I'm hoping to lay some breadcrumbs for future researchers to study this period.
Derk Sauer: Yes, we launched one magazine after another and grew from 20 people to over a thousand employees in a couple of years.
Daniel Satinsky: Did you move to your own building?
Derk Sauer: First, we moved from Slovianski to another location as the hotel became a real hotel. We became neighbors with Komsomolskaya Pravda in the heart of the Soviet press district, taking over a huge space that was the former accounting department of Pravda. As we grew more, we rented an entire office building.
Daniel Satinsky: I have about ten questions in my mind at once, so let me slow down and ask them properly. What was the name of the parent company behind all these ventures?
Derk Sauer: The company was owned by myself and my friend. We called it Independent Media.
Daniel Satinsky: Independent Media. Okay. So you were consciously blazing a new trail for media in Russia. Could you talk a bit about the others who followed behind you, particularly in the newspaper space?
Derk Sauer: In the newspaper space, there was one other very important newspaper, Kommersant. They did on the newspaper side what we did on the magazine side. Kommersant was started by Vladimir Yakovlev, the grandson of the famous Yakovlev, the partner of Gorbachev. He came up with the idea to make a newspaper for the new emerging Russian business class. The newspaper was independent, not linked to any state organizations, and the writing was much more eclectic and lively. It became the bible for the emerging middle class, capturing the spirit of the time.
Daniel Satinsky: By 1996-98, how many expats would you estimate were in Moscow?
Derk Sauer: At the peak, we estimated between 50,000 and 60,000 expats of all nationalities.
Daniel Satinsky: What about the Moscow News started by the Indian guy?
Derk Sauer: That was the Moscow Tribune, not Moscow News. Moscow News was an old Soviet publication, very popular during glasnost. The Moscow Tribune, started by the Indian guy, wasn't as good in solid journalism. We had a very good team of journalists, like Mick Borden from the Herald Tribune, Steve Liesman, Lynn Berry, and others who went on to become famous in their fields.
Daniel Satinsky: So this was a launching pad for young journalists?
Derk Sauer: Yes, we called it a small newspaper about the big story. Even now, our coverage, for instance about COVID in Russia, is unrivaled and quoted all over the world. In those early days without the internet, we had a team of very ambitious young people.
Daniel Satinsky: Did you cover events like the 1993 White House bombing, the 1996 Yeltsin election, and the 1998 financial crisis?
Derk Sauer: Yes, we covered everything.
Daniel Satinsky: What about The Exile? What was your opinion about it?
Derk Sauer: They were quite talented but definitely over the top. They saw us as boring and old-fashioned journalists, but we were proud of that. We focused on balanced, correct, and double-checked journalism, unlike their gonzo style.The Exile was also very sexist.
Daniel Satinsky: Yes, they were. They were never really a competitor but catered to a certain section of the expat community.They were associated with places like the Hungry Duck.
Derk Sauer: Yes, places like that. Our scene was people in the expat community who worked hard to build businesses, Russians interested in joining foreign companies, and good solid journalism.
Daniel Satinsky: Did your foreign staff members typically speak Russian?
Derk Sauer: Not in the first two years, but pretty soon it became a requirement. We got more people who were Russian studies graduates or from Russian backgrounds but attended American or European universities. Now, everyone in the newsroom speaks Russian.
Daniel Satinsky: You had to develop your own sources of information like traditional reporters?
Derk Sauer: Yes, and we maintained serious journalism over the years. Everything we write about is authoritative and no-nonsense.
Daniel Satinsky: I read the paper in those days because it was the best source of information for me. My Russian was fairly primitive.
Derk Sauer: Absolutely.
Daniel Satinsky: Were you close to other institutions like AmCham and the European Business Club?
Derk Sauer: We used their information but always tried to stay independent, similar to how newspapers in Boston or New York would relate to the local chamber of commerce.
Daniel Satinsky: So, okay, nothing particularly special. And what about the organization Internews? Did you have any interaction with them?
Derk Sauer: Yes, but that had nothing to do with the Moscow Times. They were very nice people, and for a while, we had our own training center. A big part of what we did was hire people and train them since we never hired established journalists. I knew that once people had gone through Russian journalism, it would be impossible to get them to write as we wanted. So, we hired fresh graduates from university—linguistics, arts, whatever—as long as they were young and energetic. We set up our own training institute for the basics of our style of journalism, and we did this for years. Internews was involved a little bit with us in training journalists from the regions.
Daniel Satinsky: Right. Their involvement was mostly with TV stations, as I understand it. I've spoken with several of those people. They also seemed to have an important effect on independent media.
Derk Sauer: Local TV stations.
Daniel Satinsky: So the magazines were the economic basis. For how long did you keep control of the magazines, or for how long were those part of your portfolio?
Derk Sauer: Let's not forget one of the most important things I did. When the Moscow Times was doing okay—not making real money, but doing okay—and we had these magazines, I always had this dream of starting a Russian-language newspaper.
Daniel Satinsky: Okay.
Derk Sauer: For a while, I thought about maybe the Moscow Times in Russian. But I saw that Kommersant, which started under Yakovlev as a new thing for the Russian middle class and business community, drifted away a little bit. Yakovlev left, and the famous oligarch, the Mercedes dealer who turned into an oligarch – Berezovsky, bought the paper from Yakovlev. Then it became an oligarch newspaper. I sensed there was a market there. So I came up with the idea to start a real serious business newspaper in Russia. I have big admiration for two newspapers in the world: the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. I wanted to do it with either the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: First, I went to the Financial Times in London. London is closer, and I met the chairman there. He was intrigued by the idea. Good idea, let's do it, and so on. But as these things go, you go back and send messages, and nothing really happened.
Daniel Satinsky: Yeah.
Derk Sauer: So I thought, well, then I'll go to the Wall Street Journal. I went to New York, met the chairman of the Wall Street Journal. Same thing—intriguing idea, blah, blah, blah—but nothing happened. At a certain point, I thought, what do I do? So I called them both and said, I have an idea. Why don't we do it all together? Because I sensed that, on the one hand, they wanted to go to Russia because Russia was not toxic yet at that time. At the same time, they were a little nervous about failure.
Daniel Satinsky: Yeah.
Derk Sauer: So I said, if it's a success, you both have the success. If it's a failure, you share the failure.
Daniel Satinsky: Right, right.
Derk Sauer: So you get out of this without real problems.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: And to my surprise, they said yes. And this is how I started Vedomosti.
Daniel Satinsky: Okay, okay.
Derk Sauer: I don't know how familiar you are with Vedomosti, but it was the biggest success of what I did.
Daniel Satinsky: Really?
Derk Sauer: I mean, Cosmopolitan was the biggest success story in circulation. But in terms of impact, Vedomosti was the first truly independent business newspaper in Russia. It was launched in 1999.
Daniel Satinsky: Oh, okay. So this was after the crisis.
Derk Sauer: It was right in the middle of the crisis.
Daniel Satinsky: Yeah. Wow.
Derk Sauer: People thought we were completely crazy. But we had gone through a lot of crises, and I always understood that a crisis is the best time to launch something because, hey, no one else is launching something.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: So you have a lot of attention.
Daniel Satinsky: Yeah.
Derk Sauer: Your marketing costs are much lower. Billboards, everything is almost for free.
Daniel Satinsky: Yeah.
Derk Sauer: And you have time to build it up because people understand that it will take a little time for it to become a success.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: With Vedomosti, we launched and we had big billboards all over Moscow. By 1999, it was the heydays of the oligarchs.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: We had big billboards that said, "Every oligarch can buy this newspaper in the kiosk." It immediately sent the message, this paper is not for sale. Kommersant was owned by Berezovsky. All the oligarchsran the media in those days.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: Here we came with a newspaper co-published by the two most famous newspapers in the world, the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, saying this paper is not for sale by anyone. This was a whole new thing. This was serious business journalism. You couldn't get it more serious. In the beginning, people still said, this will never fly. This is Russia; you will be bribed, your journalists will be bribed. But we had a very good team. We had a very good young editor. The editor was like 23 or something—Leonid Bershidsky. He's now one of the top people at Bloomberg. And we just did it. It became extremely successful, both financially and in terms of influence.
Daniel Satinsky: Was it in the orange paper like the Financial Times?
Derk Sauer: Yeah, the pink paper.
Daniel Satinsky: Right, the pink paper by the Financial Times. I get the Financial Times at home, so I remember it. I remember the pink, the pink color, which also made it distinctive.
Derk Sauer: It was the paper of record in Russia. If I look back on everything I did, that's probably the most significant. My wife deserves the credit for Cosmopolitan. She was also the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan. So it was a real family business. She essentially took over many responsibilities, while I created both the Moscow Times and Vedomosti.
Daniel Satinsky: So, tell me about the arc of Vedomosti. It was launched and started to become successful. What were the circulation numbers like?
Derk Sauer: We started with about 30,000 and grew to around 100,000. But it wasn't just about the numbers. Everyone from the president to all the CEOs and important people read it.
Daniel Satinsky: You said it's your biggest success because it had the most influence, right?
Derk Sauer: Yes, it had the same kind of impact in Russia that The New York Times has in the US.
Daniel Satinsky: How involved were you with Vedomosti in terms of setting editorial priorities or doing any reporting or writing?
Derk Sauer: I never did reporting for my own newspapers or magazines. I was the publisher, but I was very involved. My biggest role was to protect the journalists. There was always pressure to write or not write something. I had to give them the confidence to work freely and responsibly. We were very strict about accuracy. Everything had to be 100% correct. We were very sharp on sourcing; all sources had to be named or known to the editors.
Daniel Satinsky: Did you ever have an issue of needing protection?
Derk Sauer: Yes, we actually did. In 1994, I befriended Yuri Milner. He is now one of the richest internet investors in the world. At that time, he was working for Khodorkovsky before Yukos was still active. We had some bad experiences with the Mafia. We were threatened, one of our photographers was beaten up, and the editor of Playboy was shot in front of our building. I got many threats, so I thought it was time to look for some protection. When I met with Yuri, he suggested Menatep take a stake in our company. We agreed on a 10% stake, which was the first time we sold part of our business. The purchase agreement had long clauses about them not being involved in editorial matters. In the years they were shareholders, they behaved very well. We criticized Yukos heavily, and while they were not happy, they never pressured or interfered.
Daniel Satinsky: That's interesting. Quite different behavior than one would expect from an oligarch.
Derk Sauer: Yes, but I was always very clear about the terms. Any suggestion of interference, and I would immediately say, "This is what we agreed. If you don't like it, I'll buy back the shares immediately."
Daniel Satinsky: So they provided you with crucial protection?
Derk Sauer: Yes. If people came to me saying I needed protection, I would say, "Don't talk to me. Go to Menatep or Yukos." The story would be over because they knew not to bother these guys. It was extremely effective.
Daniel Satinsky: The shooting of the Playboy editor was in 1995. Was that person killed?
Derk Sauer: He was not killed, thank God. He was paralyzed but recovered and became a yoga instructor.
Daniel Satinsky: So that was around the same time you started your relationship with Menatep?
Derk Sauer: Yes, around the same time.
Daniel Satinsky: Were there other kinds of political pressures put on you in those days?
Derk Sauer: Well, during the Chechen War, we had Ellen Barry, a very famous New York Times journalist, covering the war for us in Chechnya. We received a lot of heat from the government. They didn't take any concrete measures against us. They were grumbling and saying they didn't like what we were doing, but they never tried to close us down or do anything unpleasant.
Daniel Satinsky: So what is the current state of Vedomosti? How long did it last in its influential period?
Derk Sauer: I sold the whole company, which had become quite large, to a Finnish group called Sanoma in 2005. I stayed for three more years as chairman. I left around 2008 or 2009. Everything was still doing well then. But as we moved into the Putin era, around 2005 or 2006, a new foreign media law was introduced, limiting foreign ownership in media companies to no more than 20%. This law began the end of many media companies. Over the years, FT and Wall Street Journal left, and Sanoma decided to leave the country altogether. Independent media basically fell apart.
Daniel Satinsky: I see. But the Moscow Times is still around?
Derk Sauer: Yes, the Moscow Times and Vedomosti were sold to a Russian entrepreneur named Demyan Kudryavtsev. He didn't survive long in the business, and I ended up buying back the Moscow Times from him about four years ago. Now it is still with me. Vedomosti, on the other hand, was sold last summer to a Rosneft-connected businessperson close to the Kremlin, which caused a big scandal. The new editor immediately took the Kremlin line, and the independent reporting stopped. This led to a mass resignation of the editors, who came to me, and we started a new project called VTimes.
Daniel Satinsky: VTimes?
Derk Sauer: Yes, it was launched last October. It had a very successful start with a lot of journalists and readers joining. However, last month, the government declared both VTimes and the supporting foundation I had set up in the Netherlands as foreign agents, forcing us to close down.
Daniel Satinsky: Wow. So you've seen the whole cycle from start to end.
Derk Sauer: Yes. After leaving Independent Media in 2010 or 2011, I was invited by another oligarch, Mikhail Prokhorov, to become the CEO of his media company, RBC. It was a very large company but was losing money and had a reputation for corruption and unprofessionalism. I worked there for six years, bringing in a new team and turning it into a commercially successful and journalistically significant company. However, the Kremlin eventually got upset with our work, raided our offices, and started legal proceedings against us. Prokhorov was forced to sell the company to a more Kremlin-friendly owner. As a result, all of the top staff, including myself, left RBC.
Daniel Satinsky: You talk about this very dispassionately.
Derk Sauer: Well, I am an objective journalist, so I try to stay objective about my own fate as well.
Daniel Satinsky: So you're objective about your own experiences too?
Derk Sauer: Yes, that's today's version of events
Daniel Satinsky: Yeah. And so, speculating a little more about the influence of all this, it seems that institutionally the independence has been lost for journalism. But it seems to me, at the same time, the underlying impact has been pretty dramatic in terms of life values, lifestyle, and the integration of Russia into global discussions. I mean, is that a fair statement that the integration facilitated by independent media was pretty profound?
Derk Sauer: Yeah, I think that's correct. If you look at the net result of free media, of course, it's basically closed now. But if you look at how people think and behave, and how they consume information on the internet, YouTube, and social media, that's largely the result of what independent media did. They laid the groundwork for that. So, it's not just hopeless. The companies I built have been destroyed because of repression, but the spirit has not been destroyed.
Daniel Satinsky: So, this impact—do you think it will last beyond the current generation that experienced this? You've trained all these journalists and put ideas out through various magazines and journals. But now, with the repression and the cutting off of that independence, does the impact only last as long as the lifetime of this generation, or is there something more enduring?
Daniel Satinsky: Is Moscow Times your only Russia-related venture at the moment?
Derk Sauer: At the moment, yes.
Daniel Satinsky: Do you intend to stay engaged with Russia?
Derk Sauer: Yes, of course. I still like Russia a lot. I love being in Moscow; it's a great city. Over those 30 years, we've made many friends and connections in Russia. We sent our kids to Russian schools. Two of them live in Russia. My oldest son has built a very successful business in the sports industry, building and managing stadiums. He's married to a Russian woman, and they have a Russian grandchild. My second son works for the Moscow Times and is doing well. He has a Russian girlfriend. Only our youngest son is in Amsterdam, but he's working on projects related to Russia. So, our family is very connected to Russia.
Daniel Satinsky: Yeah.
Derk Sauer: I'm 68 now, turning 69 soon. I'm trying to slow down a bit, but Russia will always be part of my life.
Daniel Satinsky: Wow. Well, it feels like we're coming to a close here. Are there things I didn't ask about that you think are important to convey?
Derk Sauer: No, I think we covered most of it.
Daniel Satinsky: Okay.
Derk Sauer: When you write up your stuff, if I think of anything else, I'll let you know.
Daniel Satinsky: Good, good. The structure of what I'm writing includes citizen diplomacy, which was an antecedent to the internet and other connections, then the historical framework. There will be a separate chapter on the media and independent media. I'll check back with you about that, and I won't use anything without clearing it with you.
Derk Sauer: Sure.
Daniel Satinsky: Thank you very much. It's been a great interview and insight into those times. I hope we can preserve this history and set the stage for whatever happens next.
Derk Sauer: Thank you. We'll stay in touch.
Daniel Satinsky: Great. Thank you. Take care.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: And to my surprise, they said yes. And this is how I started Vedomosti.
Daniel Satinsky: Okay, okay.
Derk Sauer: I don't know how familiar you are with Vedomosti, but it was the biggest success of what I did.
Daniel Satinsky: Really?
Derk Sauer: I mean, Cosmopolitan was the biggest success story in circulation. But in terms of impact, Vedomosti was the first truly independent business newspaper in Russia. It was launched in 1999.
Daniel Satinsky: Oh, okay. So this was after the crisis.
Derk Sauer: It was right in the middle of the crisis.
Daniel Satinsky: Yeah. Wow.
Derk Sauer: People thought we were completely crazy. But we had gone through a lot of crises, and I always understood that a crisis is the best time to launch something because, hey, no one else is launching something.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: So you have a lot of attention.
Daniel Satinsky: Yeah.
Derk Sauer: Your marketing costs are much lower. Billboards, everything is almost for free.
Daniel Satinsky: Yeah.
Derk Sauer: And you have time to build it up because people understand that it will take a little time for it to become a success.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: With Vedomosti, we launched and we had big billboards all over Moscow. By 1999, it was the heydays of the oligarchs.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: We had big billboards that said, "Every oligarch can buy this newspaper in the kiosk." It immediately sent the message, this paper is not for sale. Kommersant was owned by Berezovsky. All the oligarchsran the media in those days.
Daniel Satinsky: Right.
Derk Sauer: Here we came with a newspaper co-published by the two most famous newspapers in the world, the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, saying this paper is not for sale by anyone. This was a whole new thing. This was serious business journalism. You couldn't get it more serious. In the beginning, people still said, this will never fly. This is Russia; you will be bribed, your journalists will be bribed. But we had a very good team. We had a very good young editor. The editor was like 23 or something—Leonid Bershidsky. He's now one of the top people at Bloomberg. And we just did it. It became extremely successful, both financially and in terms of influence.
Daniel Satinsky: Was it in the orange paper like the Financial Times?
Derk Sauer: Yeah, the pink paper.
Daniel Satinsky: Right, the pink paper by the Financial Times. I get the Financial Times at home, so I remember it. I remember the pink, the pink color, which also made it distinctive.
Derk Sauer: It was the paper of record in Russia. If I look back on everything I did, that's probably the most significant. My wife deserves the credit for Cosmopolitan. She was also the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan. So it was a real family business. She essentially took over many responsibilities, while I created both the Moscow Times and Vedomosti.
Daniel Satinsky: So, tell me about the arc of Vedomosti. It was launched and started to become successful. What were the circulation numbers like?
Derk Sauer: We started with about 30,000 and grew to around 100,000. But it wasn't just about the numbers. Everyone from the president to all the CEOs and important people read it.
Daniel Satinsky: You said it's your biggest success because it had the most influence, right?
Derk Sauer: Yes, it had the same kind of impact in Russia that The New York Times has in the US.
Daniel Satinsky: How involved were you with Vedomosti in terms of setting editorial priorities or doing any reporting or writing?
Derk Sauer: I never did reporting for my own newspapers or magazines. I was the publisher, but I was very involved. My biggest role was to protect the journalists. There was always pressure to write or not write something. I had to give them the confidence to work freely and responsibly. We were very strict about accuracy. Everything had to be 100% correct. We were very sharp on sourcing; all sources had to be named or known to the editors.
Daniel Satinsky: Did you ever have an issue of needing protection?
Derk Sauer: Yes, we actually did. In 1994, I befriended Yuri Milner. He is now one of the richest internet investors in the world. At that time, he was working for Khodorkovsky before Yukos was still active. We had some bad experiences with the Mafia. We were threatened, one of our photographers was beaten up, and the editor of Playboy was shot in front of our building. I got many threats, so I thought it was time to look for some protection. When I met with Yuri, he suggested Menatep take a stake in our company. We agreed on a 10% stake, which was the first time we sold part of our business. The purchase agreement had long clauses about them not being involved in editorial matters. In the years they were shareholders, they behaved very well. We criticized Yukos heavily, and while they were not happy, they never pressured or interfered.
Daniel Satinsky: That's interesting. Quite different behavior than one would expect from an oligarch.
Derk Sauer: Yes, but I was always very clear about the terms. Any suggestion of interference, and I would immediately say, "This is what we agreed. If you don't like it, I'll buy back the shares immediately."
Daniel Satinsky: So they provided you with crucial protection?
Derk Sauer: Yes. If people came to me saying I needed protection, I would say, "Don't talk to me. Go to Menatep or Yukos." The story would be over because they knew not to bother these guys. It was extremely effective.
Daniel Satinsky: The shooting of the Playboy editor was in 1995. Was that person killed?
Derk Sauer: He was not killed, thank God. He was paralyzed but recovered and became a yoga instructor.
Daniel Satinsky: So that was around the same time you started your relationship with Menatep?
Derk Sauer: Yes, around the same time.
Daniel Satinsky: Were there other kinds of political pressures put on you in those days?
Derk Sauer: Well, during the Chechen War, we had Ellen Barry, a very famous New York Times journalist, covering the war for us in Chechnya. We received a lot of heat from the government. They didn't take any concrete measures against us. They were grumbling and saying they didn't like what we were doing, but they never tried to close us down or do anything unpleasant.
Daniel Satinsky: So what is the current state of Vedomosti? How long did it last in its influential period?
Derk Sauer: I sold the whole company, which had become quite large, to a Finnish group called Sanoma in 2005. I stayed for three more years as chairman. I left around 2008 or 2009. Everything was still doing well then. But as we moved into the Putin era, around 2005 or 2006, a new foreign media law was introduced, limiting foreign ownership in media companies to no more than 20%. This law began the end of many media companies. Over the years, FT and Wall Street Journal left, and Sanoma decided to leave the country altogether. Independent media basically fell apart.
Daniel Satinsky: I see. But the Moscow Times is still around?
Derk Sauer: Yes, the Moscow Times and Vedomosti were sold to a Russian entrepreneur named Demyan Kudryavtsev. He didn't survive long in the business, and I ended up buying back the Moscow Times from him about four years ago. Now it is still with me. Vedomosti, on the other hand, was sold last summer to a Rosneft-connected businessperson close to the Kremlin, which caused a big scandal. The new editor immediately took the Kremlin line, and the independent reporting stopped. This led to a mass resignation of the editors, who came to me, and we started a new project called VTimes.
Daniel Satinsky: VTimes?
Derk Sauer: Yes, it was launched last October. It had a very successful start with a lot of journalists and readers joining. However, last month, the government declared both VTimes and the supporting foundation I had set up in the Netherlands as foreign agents, forcing us to close down.
Daniel Satinsky: Wow. So you've seen the whole cycle from start to end.
Derk Sauer: Yes. After leaving Independent Media in 2010 or 2011, I was invited by another oligarch, Mikhail Prokhorov, to become the CEO of his media company, RBC. It was a very large company but was losing money and had a reputation for corruption and unprofessionalism. I worked there for six years, bringing in a new team and turning it into a commercially successful and journalistically significant company. However, the Kremlin eventually got upset with our work, raided our offices, and started legal proceedings against us. Prokhorov was forced to sell the company to a more Kremlin-friendly owner. As a result, all of the top staff, including myself, left RBC.
Daniel Satinsky: You talk about this very dispassionately.
Derk Sauer: Well, I am an objective journalist, so I try to stay objective about my own fate as well.
Daniel Satinsky: So you're objective about your own experiences too?
Derk Sauer: Yes, that's today's version of events
Daniel Satinsky: Yeah. And so, speculating a little more about the influence of all this, it seems that institutionally the independence has been lost for journalism. But it seems to me, at the same time, the underlying impact has been pretty dramatic in terms of life values, lifestyle, and the integration of Russia into global discussions. I mean, is that a fair statement that the integration facilitated by independent media was pretty profound?
Derk Sauer: Yeah, I think that's correct. If you look at the net result of free media, of course, it's basically closed now. But if you look at how people think and behave, and how they consume information on the internet, YouTube, and social media, that's largely the result of what independent media did. They laid the groundwork for that. So, it's not just hopeless. The companies I built have been destroyed because of repression, but the spirit has not been destroyed.
Daniel Satinsky: So, this impact—do you think it will last beyond the current generation that experienced this? You've trained all these journalists and put ideas out through various magazines and journals. But now, with the repression and the cutting off of that independence, does the impact only last as long as the lifetime of this generation, or is there something more enduring?
Daniel Satinsky: Is Moscow Times your only Russia-related venture at the moment?
Derk Sauer: At the moment, yes.
Daniel Satinsky: Do you intend to stay engaged with Russia?
Derk Sauer: Yes, of course. I still like Russia a lot. I love being in Moscow; it's a great city. Over those 30 years, we've made many friends and connections in Russia. We sent our kids to Russian schools. Two of them live in Russia. My oldest son has built a very successful business in the sports industry, building and managing stadiums. He's married to a Russian woman, and they have a Russian grandchild. My second son works for the Moscow Times and is doing well. He has a Russian girlfriend. Only our youngest son is in Amsterdam, but he's working on projects related to Russia. So, our family is very connected to Russia.
Daniel Satinsky: Yeah.
Derk Sauer: I'm 68 now, turning 69 soon. I'm trying to slow down a bit, but Russia will always be part of my life.
Daniel Satinsky: Wow. Well, it feels like we're coming to a close here. Are there things I didn't ask about that you think are important to convey?
Derk Sauer: No, I think we covered most of it.
Daniel Satinsky: Okay.
Derk Sauer: When you write up your stuff, if I think of anything else, I'll let you know.
Daniel Satinsky: Good, good. The structure of what I'm writing includes citizen diplomacy, which was an antecedent to the internet and other connections, then the historical framework. There will be a separate chapter on the media and independent media. I'll check back with you about that, and I won't use anything without clearing it with you.
Derk Sauer: Sure.
Daniel Satinsky: Thank you very much. It's been a great interview and insight into those times. I hope we can preserve this history and set the stage for whatever happens next.
Derk Sauer: Thank you. We'll stay in touch.
Daniel Satinsky: Great. Thank you. Take care.
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