Vladimir Posner - Biography

Vladimir Vladimirovich Posner (also spelled "Pozner"; in Russian, Владимир Владимирович Познер), born 1 April 1934, is a Russian journalist best known in the West for appearing on television to represent and explain the views of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He was a memorable spokesman for the Soviets in part because he had grown up in the United States and spoke flawless American English with a New York accent.

Early life

Vladimir Pozner was born on April 1, 1934 in Paris to a Russian-Jewish father, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Pozner and French mother, Géraldine Lutten. The couple separated shortly after his birth. When Vladimir was 3 months old he and his mother moved to New York City, where Géraldine's mother and younger sister lived. In the spring of 1939 Pozner's parents reunited and the family returned to Paris, France.

After the outbreak of World War II and the invasion of France the Pozners fled Paris in the fall of 1940, traveling via Marseilles in the Free Zone, Madrid, Barcelona, and Lisbon, before sailing back to America. The escape was partially financed by a Jewish family whose adult daughter traveled with the Pozners disguised as Vladimir's "nanny".

Back in New York Vladimir attended Caroline Pratt's City and Country School and later Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. Robert Hollander, an elementary school friend of Pozner, remembered him most vividly for "his capacities for, one, having extraordinarily attractive fantasies and, two, for getting the rest of us to believe them."

In 1946, with the advent of McCarthyism, Pozner Sr. began to have serious problems with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, because of his pro-Soviet views and correctly suspected cooperation with the Soviet intelligence services. The documents which conclusively proved the secret service connections of his father were published in 1996 in the USA. As a result, the Pozners intended to return to France, but Pozner Sr., was refused a French visa after being denounced to the French Foreign Ministry as a "subversive element" and a "spy". So, the Pozners moved in 1948 to the Soviet sector of Berlin where Pozner Sr. was offered a position with "SovExportFilm", an international distributor of Soviet films. At some point Pozner Jr. claimed to have stayed behind in New York, attending Columbia College between 1950 and December 1953, however there appears to be no record of him at Columbia; currently he tells of attending a Russian military-style high school in Berlin run by the Soviet occupation authorities during that time.

Later, in 1952, the family moved to Moscow.

In 1953 Pozner enrolled at Moscow State University, Faculty of Biology and Soil Science, majoring in human physiology. He graduated in 1958.

Career

After graduation, Pozner became a secretary for Samuil Marshak, a renowned Russian writer, poet and translator; to supplement his modest salary he free-lanced as a Russian-to-English translator of scientific texts. While in Marshak's employ, Pozner was introduced to many popular literary figures of the Khrushchev Thaw.

In 1961 Pozner was offered the position of senior editor with Novosty Press Agency's Soviet Life magazine. In 1967 he transferred to a sister publication, Sputnik, leaving it in February 1970 for a job in broadcasting.

He worked as chief commentator for the North American service of the Radio Moscow network. In the early 1970s, he was a regular guest on Ray Briem's talk show on KABC in Los Angeles. During the 1980s, he was a favourite guest on Ted Koppel's Nightline'Lonersner was the host of Moscow Meridian, an English-language current affairs program focusing on the Soviet Union; the show was produced by Gosteleradio, the Soviet State Committee for Television and Radio and broadcast on the Satellite Program Network. He also often appeared on The Phil Donahue Show.

In his Western media appearances Pozner was a charismatic and articulate apologist of some of the Soviet Union's most controversial foreign and domestic policy decisions. A master of tu quoque, he would frequently draw parallels and point out similarities between Soviet and Western policies as well as candidly admit the existence of certain problems in the USSR. However, while stopping short of unequivocal endorsement and support, he nevertheless rationalized, among others, the arrest and exiling of Andrei Sakharov, the invasion of Afghanistan and shooting down of KAL 007. In his 1990 autobiography Parting with Illusions. he wrote that some of the positions he had taken were wrong and immoral. In a 2005 interview with NPR's On the Media, Posner spoke openly about his role as a Soviet spokesman, stating bluntly, "What I was doing was propaganda." Comparing his former role to that of Karen Hughes, the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, he commented that, "You know, as someone who's gone through this and someone who regrets having done what he's done, and who spent many, many years of his life, and I think probably the best years of my life, doing something that was wrong, I say it just isn't worth it".

In spite of his frequent appearances in the Western media and his near-celebrity status as the principal spokesman for the Soviet Union Pozner remained virtually unknown at home.

This changed in the mid-80s, when Pozner co-hosted several bilateral, televised discussions (or "spacebridges") between audiences in the Soviet Union and the US, carried via satellite. These included "Moscow Calling San Diego: Children and Film" (with Mike Cole), "Remembering War" (May 7, 1985, with Fred Starr), "Citizens Summit I - Leningrad/Seattle" (December 29, 1985) and "Citizens Summit II: Women to Women - Leningrad/Boston" (May 20, 1986) - both with Phil Donahue. The programs marked a dramatic turning point in Pozner's career, garnering him instant renown and wide popularity and acclaim from domestic audiences in the USSR. He was promoted to the position of "political observer of Central Television", the highest journalistic rank at Gosteleradio, and started to work on programs that were broadcast domestically. However, in 1991 Pozner was asked to resign after being quoted voicing his support for Boris Yeltsin over Mikhail Gorbachev.

Later that year Pozner received an offer to work with Phil Donahue and moved to the United States. From 1991 to 1994 they co-hosted Pozner/Donahue, a weekly, issues-oriented roundtable program, which aired both on CNBC and in syndication. While living in New York, Pozner regularly commuted to Moscow to tape his programs that aired in Russia.

He returned to Moscow in 1997, continuing his work as an independent television journalist.

In 1997, Posner founded the School for Television Excellence («Школу телевизионного мастерства») in Moscow to educate and promote young journalists.

From its foundation in 1994 until 2008 Pozner was president of the Russian Television Academy, which annually awards the prestigious TEFI trophy.

Posner also worked for the Institute for US and Canadian Studies, a Soviet think tank.

Since 2004 with his brother Pavel, he co-owns a French brasserie in Moscow, Жеральдин (Chez Géraldine), named after their mother.

Shows

For many years during the Cold War, Vladimir Posner delivered the nightly "Radio Moscow News and Commentary" program on the North America Service with his signature greeting, "Thank you and good evening".

Pozner was the host of several shows on Russian TV, among them the US-Soviet space bridges, "Mi" (translated "Us"), "Vremya i Mi" ("The Time and Us"), "Voskresnyi Vecher s Vladimirom Poznerom" ("Sunday Night with Vladimir Pozner"), "Chelovek v maske" ("A Man in the Mask"), "Vremena" ("Times"). Most of these followed a talk show format, with varying numbers of guests and varying degree and manner of audience participation.

Since 2004 Pozner has been contributing his time as the host of "Vremya Zhyt' !" ("A time to live!"), a series of talk shows about the problem of HIV/AIDS. The programs are produced and broadcast by regional television stations and focus on addressing the local challenges that exist in different parts of Russia.

In 2008 Pozner, with Ivan Urgant and Brian Kahn, released "Odnoetazhnaya Amerika" ("One-Storied America"), a 16 episode travel documentary based on the 1937 book "Little Golden America" by Ilya Ilf and Yevgenyi Petrov.

Pozner and Urgent also collaborated on a subsequent project, "Tour de France", set to air in the fall of 2010.

Today (2010) he hosts an eponymous interview show "Pozner" on Russia's Channel One

He has a lively and unconstrained style of hosting, often firing poignant off-the-cuff remarks at his guests. He frequently comments on how this or that political or economic decision, presently at issue in his show, could affect the common people of Russia.

Personal life

While living in New York, at the age of 12, the young Vladimir ("Vova") had a boyhood crush on a certain Mary, a "stunning" Irish-American woman more than 20 years his senior with a "mane of copper hair" who took him to the movies and served him cocktails at her home. When Pozner returned to the United States after a 38-year absence, she, however, did not wish to see him, preferring instead to be remembered the way she once was.

As a freshman at Moscow State University he once again fell in love with an older woman named Zhenya (Eugenia), moving in with her in a rented room of a communal apartment. Both his and her families disapproved of the torrid affair, which came to an end when Pozner flunked the final exams and was expelled from the university, although later his father managed to persuade the dean to reinstate him on a provisional basis.

In his last year at Moscow University (1958) Pozner married Valentina Tchemberdji, a fellow student at the department of Philology. Two years later they had a daughter, Katia. They divorced in 1968.

Pozner's daughter, composer Katia Tchemberdji, currently lives in Berlin

Around the time of his divorce Pozner met his second wife, Ekaterina Orlova, while they both worked for Novosti Press Agency's Sputnik magazine. They were married for 35 years. Orlova, an accomplished journalist in her own right, was a co-founder of the Pozner School for Television Excellence.

Since 2005 Pozner has been linked with Nadezhda Soloviova, а leading Russian show business impresario.

Pozner holds 3 citizenships: French - by birth, Russian (initially, Soviet) - presumably by descent and US - obtained in the early 1990s by naturalization. Interestingly, in 1968, while attempting to renounce his French nationality so that he could visit France without fear of prosecution for failure to serve in the Algerian War, he was formally notified by the Soviet Foreign Ministry that his Soviet passport, initially granted to him in 1950, at 16, was issued in error, and that he in fact was not a citizen of the USSR. Much to Pozner's amusement this also technically invalidated, among other things, his membership in the CPSU, his marriage and divorce, propiska and his rank of lieutenant in the reserves.

Pozner is a fan of tennis and baseball. In 1992 he co-founded The Moscow Dummies (Московские Чайники, lit. the Moscow Teapots), an amateur baseball team. He is a cigar aficionado. He also collects turtle figurines and fountain pens. He enjoys playing charades.

He is an atheist and has spoken critically of the Russian Orthodox Church and the resurgence of religion in post-Soviet Russia.

Books

External links