"AMERICAN HELP FOR RUSSIAN DEMOCRACY" & SOROS

Above heading from WSJ (Wall St Journal) article of October 3, 1991 to which I refer in a earlier post concerning George Soros and from which I promised to extract as best I can.

Reporter/author BYLINE for report below to be provided at the END, rather than beginning, of extract.

You will understand why when you see/read name and bio.

As a very brief reminder for those who do not recall those times, TECHNOLOGY was VERY DIFFERENT, much more limited, than now, altho, truly, most people NOW are equally if not more stupid and ignorant despite SUPPOSEDLY abundant information access.

So, KEEP IN MIND TECHNOLOGICAL LIMITS OF THE TIME when reading following EXTRACT or it does NOT make sense:

EXCERPT FROM ABOVE HEADING AND DATE:

"...The main problem that Boris Yeltsin and his followers encountered as they gathered to defend their headquarters at the Russian Parliament was to inform the population about their activities.
In Poland during the rise of Solidarity, the circulation of tens of thousands of photocopied leaflets played a decisive role.  
Thanks to an American foundation, the Russians were able to repeat this experience.
Four years ago, a wealthy Hungarian financier named George SOROS founded a series of philanthropic organizations in the countries of Eastern Europe to support intellectuals of an anti-communist bent.  
Among the was 'Cultural Initiative,' founded in the Soviet Union.
Close to 1,000 Soviet intellectuals--who until then had for political reasons been denied permission to leave the country--were able to visit the US to work in the best American universities, libraries, archives and scientific societies.  
The KGB well understood the anti-communist tendency of Cultural Initiative and organizations like it.  
At the moment of the coup, it was employees of the SOROS MOSCOW organization who helped independent journalists gathered around Mr. Yeltsin.  
It was SOROS FOUNDATION people too who provided journalists from the independent Russian TV stations with video cameras--which had just arrived a few days earlier from New York.
Andrei Makarov, the SOROS FOUNDATION's new acting director, organized the printing of flyers and bulletins for distribution in the tens of thousands on the very day of the coup.  
Mr. Makarov ordered the provision of 3 photocopy machines to the Moscow News newspaper, 2 photocopiers to the Independent Newspaper and 4 to the Civil Society Program, whose leaders have actively promoted the independent press in the Soviet Union.
Vera Boiko, the executive secretary of the committee on freedom of conscience and religion in the Russian parliament told me, 
"Without the help of this technology, it would have been impossible to transmute the silence of the newspapers and release the first information to the residents of Moscow...."

BY VALERY N. SOYFER

Mr. Soyfer, a formerly scientific director of the Soviet Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics, emigrated in 1988 and is now a professor of biological sciences at George Mason University.