Find it out, write it down, get it out there.

Leonid Bershidsky remembers pioneering journalist Derk Sauer

Derk Sauer, who died in Amsterdam on Thursday at the age of 72, was a figure of rare consequence in the history of post-Soviet journalism. A former reporter and editor in the Netherlands, he departed for the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and went on to establish Independent Media, a publishing house built around local editions of Western glossy magazines. The venture made Sauer a wealthy man, but his crowning achievement was Vedomosti, the first Russian newspaper to adhere to rigorous Western editorial standards. He later assumed control of the RBC media holding, overseeing its successful transformation and ascendancy. In 2022, Sauer returned to the Netherlands, bringing with him The Moscow Times newsroom — the very publication where his adventures in the Russian media business began. Derk Sauer died from injuries sustained in a sailing accident. At Meduza’s request, Leonid Bershidsky, Vedomosti’s first editor-in-chief, offers this remembrance, presented below in translation.

Derk Sauer — my mentor and professional lodestar — was a man of revolution. In his youth, he was a committed leftist who took part in every European upheaval. As a young correspondent, he ventured to Mozambique, Nicaragua, Cambodia. As a seasoned risk-taker, he arrived in Russia, where revolution meant the collapse of his youthful ideals.

That revolution made the former Maoist a multimillionaire. The publishing business he created from scratch in the early 1990s, he sold well before all foreign media owners were forced to do so. Yet Sauer’s trajectory followed a consistent logic. He consistently found himself at the heart of efforts to restore justice — a road that inevitably led him to post-communist Moscow, where hundreds of journalists in those days sought a non-Soviet, more honest way of reporting the news.

To get hired by Derk at The Moscow Times — a free newspaper for the many expats living in Moscow at the time — you had to write in English. The staff, mostly Western adventurers, distrusted the locals. In 1994, we were paid half what foreigners made. As the Russian employees’ representative on the workers’ committee — Sauer couldn’t imagine a company without a union — I went to him to demand our rights. “Life is not fair,” Derk said with a shrug. But within two years, he equalized the pay between Russians and expats.

Sauer mortgaged his home in the Netherlands to found Independent Media in Moscow. The glossy magazines that followed, produced with the same integrity as his newspapers and on equally austere budgets, made him wealthy enough to settle in Zhukovka, an exclusive suburb near Moscow’s prestigious Rublyovskoye Highway. Sauer appointed women to senior roles in a business culture that still deemed them second-class citizens. These women — the future elite of Russian glossy magazine publishing — worked for him as if it were their company.

At different times, Derk’s partners included the billionaires Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Vladimir Potanin. Both men assumed their investments would purchase influence. Both men underestimated Sauer and quietly exited the business.

The success of the magazines made possible a breakthrough in quality journalism — the launch of the daily newspaper Vedomosti in September 1999. Derk assembled this venture by uniting two fierce rivals — The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times — that were unwilling to risk going it alone in a market then dominated by Kommersant, itself unable to fill more than two pages with business news.

Neither Sauer nor his partners wanted Soviet journalists leading the newsroom. The editorial team began with several former Moscow Times reporters — most of us not yet 30. I told Sauer that his budget was enough for 13 people, too few for a daily paper, and he fired me on the spot. He didn’t mention it again — and that’s how I ended up as editor-in-chief at launch with a team of 30. On the day that Derk and I flew to Zurich for Vedomosti’s first board meeting, my deputy, Alexander Gordeyev, who was also scheduled to fly with us, was arrested after a street fight. Sauer demanded that I fire Gordeyev but took no action when I refused. He gave second chances — and third chances — to everyone who didn’t sell out and worked for him as if it were their company.

“A magazine,” Derk would say, “is like a plane: it takes off vertically and falls vertically. A newspaper is like a train: once it gains speed, it’s unstoppable.” We took off fast, but a train runs on tracks, and we owed our reputation mostly to our newsroom’s rules. These were rules set by our American and British partners, sure, but really they were Derk’s rules. They came down to having no hidden agenda whatsoever. Find it out, write it down, get it out there.

When Sauer fired me a second time, three years later, I deserved it again: the paper was now turning a profit, but I was burned out and unable to take it further. Leaving, I unknowingly left Derk with a ticking time bomb.

About six months before I left, Derk called me in and said the biggest advertiser in glossy magazines, a jewelry company, wanted Vedomosti to write about its business. “But they give no business information about themselves — they only want us to write about their flashy boutique openings,” I objected. “But you are reporters,” Derk said. “If they don’t give it, then go find it.”

I was already studying at business school, thanks to a loan from Derk, when our investigative reporter Bulat Stolyarov cracked the jewelers story. It ran on a full page, and by the next day, the tax authorities were raiding the company. Naturally, the owners pulled their millions of dollars in magazine ads, but Vedomosti’s new editor-in-chief, Tatyana Lysova, faced no repercussions. Later, I took on another project for Derk — SmartMoney magazine — and he wrote off most of my student debt.

Many years later, when Vedomosti was trampled into the mud by its state owners, Sauer provided jobs — and the chance to continue writing honestly and without a hidden agenda — to many of my old colleagues and to those who followed. Dozens of Russian-language journalists owe their careers and distinctive grasp of their craft to Sauer. When Putin went off the deep end, it was Sauer who helped many — from TV Rain staff to the most principled members of Vedomosti’s last true team — preserve the profession in exile.

On the day Derk passed, Pavel Miledin, a former Vedomosti reporter, recalled how someone had carved height marks into the doorframe of our old newsroom on Vyborgskaya Street in Moscow. There was mine, and above that, a mark for the giant Sasha Gordeyev. And a meter above that, another inscription bore Derk’s name. He was not a tall man, but that mark was not a form of flattery. We still had a long way to grow to reach him.

We fell short. Sauer outlived the independent Russian press, which, in my admittedly biased view, he himself created. But this is not the end. Derk, thanks to you, I believe in second chances. And third ones.

From Meduza’s newsroom: After returning to the Netherlands, Derk Sauer helped many independent Russian publications forced into exile, including TV Rain and Meduza. We will forever remember his kindness and involvement. It was an honor to have such a friend. Meduza offers its condolences to Derk Sauer’s family and colleagues.

Text by Leonid Bershidsky

Translation by Kevin Rothrock