RT: Your newspaper is often compared with some Western ones – for example, The Sun. Is there a grain of truth in such comparisons?

VC: When the Soviet era was coming to an end, we started to receive a large amount of offers from western colleagues who wanted to study our model and share their secrets. We traveled to the West a lot and studied press culture. This helped to transform our newspaper. Speaking of foreign analogs – I don’t think the SUN is an ideal choice. We’re closer to the UK's Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph.

RT: How would you describe an average “Komsomolskaya Pravda” reader?

VC: He is a working person with a rather small salary thinking of simple, mass things. A victim of mass culture. However, sometimes we underestimate our reader. For example, we started selling classic books, music and films bundled with the paper and suddenly discovered that there is a real hunger for this sort of offer in Russia. A collection of Mozart music and other classic composers sold 5 million copies!

RT: What steps do you plan to take now that you know your readers like the classics?

VC: I don’t know what’s behind this. I don’t think that millions of people all of a sudden fell in love with classical music. I think these families have kids and want to give them some spiritual support in our turbulent time.

RT: What is the biggest chance that you have taken?

VC: One of the peaks that this paper had happened when we published Solzhenitsyn’s address from the US back in the Soviet times. I’m also proud that KP has never taken sides – we’ve always given an opportunity to people to speak their mind.

RT: Was there ever any material that you are ashamed of?

VC: In the USSR, we used to scold Brodsky a lot. We used to rail against many people of considerable worth – Solzhenitsyn and Pasternak, we fought attempts to revive private property, saying that people were distracted from spiritual concerns by the desire to grow strawberries and selling them. It was a crime.

RT: Is there anything you would never write about?

VC: No. If there is a topic – it all depends on how to cook it. There is a fish in Japan called fugu. It is poisonous but there are cooks who can make a tasty dish out of it.

RT: In your opinion, is there freedom of the press in Russia?

VC: KP has the biggest circulation in Russia. To say that the state is not interested in what the most popular newspaper is writing about is not true; I wouldn’t respect such a state. Of course, we communicate with authorities and sometimes they – like any other part of society – express unhappiness with us. But this is not unusual. If everyone is happy with the paper, it’s dead. I’ve been working in this field for a long time, and I know that in the West it is pretty much the same. Any Senator or Congressman can call a newspaper and say they’re unhappy.