Tabloid Sells Sex, Aids Information

A POPULAR Russian newspaper, SPEED-Info, includes advice about AIDS along with stories about celebrities and tales of the bizarre.

MOSCOW - If Russia had more supermarkets, SPEED-Info might be called a supermarket tabloid. It has all the elements: sex, celebrities, tales of the bizarre, strangely doctored photographs and a readership in the millions.

It has something else, though, that sets it apart. SPEED-Info's name means "AIDS-Info" in Russian. Each issue of the slick monthly newspaper carries at least one page of advice about safe sex and how to cope with the AIDS epidemic, which came late to Russia but is making up for lost time.

How this came to be, and how SPEED-Info became one of the biggest publishing successes in post-Soviet Russia, is a uniquely Russian tale that reflects this society's sometimes-fascinated, sometimes-ambivalent attitude toward AIDS.

"It is very useful," said Nina Zaretskaya, who shares each issue with her 11-year-old daughter. "I guess the articles are disclosing a subject that we didn't discuss before."

Depending on whose figures you believe, its circulation - it claims just under 4 million - makes it either the country's most popular or second-most popular paper.

A recent issue showcases its strange mix. On the front cover, a woman climbing scaffolding stares seductively at the reader. She's naked except for a welder's helmet, a harness and thick canvas gloves. Smaller photos and garish headlines lure the reader inside.

There, SPEED-Info delivers pages of sex stories (many strangely tame), a page of jokes, a crossword, articles about cloning and fratricide and numerous columns of advice about love, sex and AIDS.

It is in these AIDS and sex-advice columns that SPEED-Info makes its mark, guiding the reader gently through a once-forbidden subject.

Russian society, which shunned public mention of sex as recently as a decade ago, has opened its eyes wide - a bit too wide for most people. Soft-core pornography is shown on television; hard-core porn is available at corner newsstands; prostitution flourishes on city streets.

In this environment, SPEED-Info seems almost mild and responsible. It markets itself as a newspaper the entire family can enjoy and even some conservative Russians look beyond its garish pictures and seem to read it for its information.

SPEED-Info properly translated is "SPID-Info," SPID being the Russian acronym for AIDS. But the editors, who started the newspaper in 1989 when AIDS was new here, wanted a cross-cultural double-entendre.

"The word SPID didn't look so terrible at the time of the start-up of the newspaper," explained its editor-in-chief, Andrei Mann. "At that time, we only had about 50 people with the virus in Moscow. At the same time, it was a play on words, because we actually used an English translation of `speed,' to mean `fast info.' "

In 1989, Mann was among a half-dozen young editors of Meditsinskaya Gazeta, the official newspaper of the Soviet Health Ministry, who decided to take advantage of the freer economic climate to start a new, popular newspaper.

They found their niche early on, with a crude publication that combined racy black-and-white graphics with the odd amalgam of sex tips, AIDS information and general interest news. For the medical and sexual advice, Mann and his colleagues relied on mainstream authorities.

There was one ironclad rule: no politics.

"One of the hidden policies we have in this newspaper is to say to people between the lines, `Don't pay attention to the government, don't pay attention to these guys in the Duma (parliament). Pay attention to your family, your home, your culture,' " Mann said.

In time, the black-and-white graphics were replaced by color, the crude newspaper stock by slicker paper. The range of articles was expanded, but at its core, SPEED-Info remained the same.

Narina Tumanova, a 17-year-old student who reads every issue, said she doesn't like the whole paper but reads articles about sex and AIDS. Can't she learn about them elsewhere?

"In principle, yes," she said. "But it's convenient for me to read such information in a popular newspaper that I can buy on any street corner. And it's written in such understandable language."