Russian daily newspaper
Kommersant (Russian: Коммерсантъ, IPA: [kəmʲɪrˈsant], The Businessman or Commerce Man, often shortened to Ъ) is a nationally distributed daily newspaper published in Russia mostly devoted to politics and business. The TNS Media and NRS Russia certified July 2013 circulation of the daily was 120,000–130,000.[1] It is owned by Alisher Usmanov.[2]
History
In 1989, with the onset of press freedom in Russia, Kommersant was founded under the ownership of businessman and publicist Vladimir Yakovlev.[3][4] The first issue was released in January 1990.[5] It was modeled after Western business journalism.[4]
The newspaper's title is spelled in Russian with a terminal hard sign (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 a pre-Soviet newspaper of the same name active between 1909 and 1917.[5] This is played up in the Kommersant 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, it became popular among business and political elites.[5] It then became a daily newspaper in 1992.[5][6] It was owned by the businessman Boris Berezovsky from 1999 until 2006, when he sold it to Badri Patarkatsishvili.[4][6] In September 2006, it was sold to Alisher Usmanov.[6]
In January 2005, Kommersant published a protest at a court ruling ordering it to publish a denial of a story about a crisis at Alfa-Bank.[7]
In 2008, BBC News named Kommersant one of Russia's leading liberal business broadsheets.[8]
