Foreign Affairs

Statement from the editor of Foreign Affairs regarding Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov's withdrawal of his essay from the September/October 2007 issue.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Lisa Shields, 212-434-9888, lshields@cfr.org

July 19, 2007

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has issued a statement explaining his withdrawal of an article that was accepted for publication in the September/October 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs. Full text of the article as edited by Foreign Affairs is posted on the Russian foreign ministry's website. In response to the foreign minister's characterizations, Foreign Affairs Editor James F. Hoge issued the following statement, rejecting all suggestions of censorship:

"The unfortunate assertions emanating from the Russian foreign minister's office regarding Foreign Affairs are utterly erroneous. The foreign minister's essay on Russian foreign policy was accepted for publication and then put through the magazine's normal editing process to clarify points, eliminate redundancies, and not in any way to change its political content. The edited draft was sent back to the foreign minister with instructions to make whatever changes he felt necessary to convey his intentions — the same instructions given to all contributors. The text was returned with a number of changes, all of which were incorporated into the final draft. The magazine also accepted changes after its copy deadline in the wake of the Bush-Putin summit in Maine. A press officer in Russia's Washington embassy complimented the edited version and gave no indication whatsoever that any of the foreign minister's major points had been left out or distorted.

"The most egregious charges completely distort the discussion over headline treatment of the minister's essay. The foreign minister's title, 'Containing Russia: Back to the Future?' was accepted. He, like all other contributors appearing in the upcoming September/October issue, was asked to add a subtitle to better draw in readers. To be helpful, Foreign Affairs offered several suggested subtitles but made clear that the wording should be the minister's choice. Embassy officials representing the foreign minister know from telephone and email exchanges with the magazine's editor that Foreign Affairs did not dictate what the subtitle should be.

"Foreign Affairs even delayed the delivery of the issue's copy to printers to give the foreign minister extra time to submit his wording. Instead he withdrew the article without explanation.

"Foreign Affairs publishes more than one hundred authored articles a year. Every single one of those undergoes editing for style, length, and clarity, but not for political content. The article in question was treated no differently. This approach is clearly stated in the magazine's credo that is published in every issue. It reads:

The articles in Foreign Affairs do not represent any consensus of beliefs. We do not expect that readers will sympathize with all the sentiments they find here, for some of our writers will flatly disagree with others, but we hold that while keeping clear of mere vagaries, Foreign Affairs can do more to inform American public opinion by a broad hospitality to divergent ideas that it can by identifying itself with one school. We do not accept responsibility for the views expressed in any article, signed or unsigned, that appears in these pages. What we do accept is the responsibility for giving them a chance to appear.

"Over the years Foreign Affairs has published many articles by Russian officials and citizens. We look forward to publishing more in the future."

Since 1922, the Council on Foreign Relations has published Foreign Affairs, America's most influential publication on international affairs and foreign policy. Foreign Affairs has a circulation of 154,000 and was ranked #1 in influence by U.S. opinion leaders in last year's national study of publications conducted by Erdos & Morgan, the premier business-to-business research firm. Inevitably, articles published in Foreign Affairs shape the political dialogue for months and years to come.