What is Argumenty i Fakty and what does the name mean?
Argumenty i Fakty is a Russian weekly newspaper and publishing house based in Moscow, commonly abbreviated AiF. The name translates from Russian as Arguments and Facts.
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Argumenty i Fakty is a Russian weekly newspaper and publishing house based in Moscow, commonly abbreviated AiF. The name translates from Russian as Arguments and Facts.
Argumenty i Fakty was founded in 1978 by the All-Union Organisation Znanie, which means Knowledge. It was originally created to serve Soviet lecturers, propagandists, and political agitators.
Argumenty i Fakty held the Guinness Book of Records entry for the largest circulation of any weekly publication in the world. In 1990 it had a print run of 33.5 million copies.
After the Soviet Union fell, distribution outside the Russian Federation was discontinued and the circulation dropped sharply. By February 2008, the print run was 2,750,000 copies, with about 8 million readers.
Since 2014, Argumenty i Fakty has been owned by the Government of Moscow. Before that, during the mid-2000s, it was owned by Promsvyazbank.
Nikolay Zyatkov edited Argumenty i Fakty around 2008, during the period when the paper was owned by Promsvyazbank and had a circulation of approximately 3 million copies.