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In Dec 1953 after Krushchev criticized the Soviet Press, a campaign was begun in the USSR which showed that the newspapers were generally offering nothing more to the reader than official communiques & were not sources of news. The reasons for this change in attitude toward the press were due, on the one hand, to the fact that the diminishing interest in the press was reducing its effectiveness as a weapon of the Party, & on the other, to the desire that the process of liberalization, thought to be inevitable, should be conducted within the framework of the party & not outside of it. Despite important developments in the way of news, the Party never relinquished control over the press, a fact which became obvious when no mention was made of the happenings in Hungary until long after those events had occurred. 2 obstacles oppose themselves to the development of newsworthy characteristics in the Soviet Press: all news must necessarily contribute to the improvement of the reader; the press was created in connection with admin've agencies, pol'al & union groups, & remains extremely specialized. This specialization led inevitably to uniformity since, outside its own field, the newspapers merely quoted the same articles verbatim. The reform took place while stating that neither the structure nor the objectives of the press needed to be modified. The change dealt mainly with those things which might be considered informative or dangerous. A certain number of problems were dealt with in the area of internat & internal problems & objectivity was increased. Furthermore, writers were no longer content to simply supply eulogies on the activities of their enterprises but engaged in criticisms. Finally, the number of letters from readers increased, & the tone of criticism became more apparent. An effort to improve the presentation of news & to introduce a wider variety of such news has been attempted, but so far is a long way from being greatly effective. Tr by J. A. Broussard from IPSA.