A. Blinov, an editor of the Russian-language press in Latvia, a publicist and writer, was born in Udmurtia, in the forest village of Blazh-Yus. His father was a rural schoolteacher who had served in the war, and his mother headed the local post office.

He was born in the same year as the newspaper Sovetskaya Molodezh, which in the 1990s was published under the titles SM and SM Segodnya.

In 2025, both the newspaper and him celebrated their 80th anniversary. This is highly symbolic, as the period when Blinov served as editor-in-chief—from 1983 to 1997—became the era of the newspaper’s greatest success. The republican newspaper (with the republic’s population at 2.6 million) was subscribed to and read across the vast Soviet Union. At that time, this was easy to arrange. In 1990, the newspaper’s circulation reached a record of over 814,000 copies—nearly a million. This was the highest circulation ever achieved by a Russian-language publication in the history of our small republic.

This achievement is directly attributable to Blinov and has become a fact of history. His life is therefore inseparable from the fate of the beloved newspaper, which no longer exists today.

Editor Blinov followed a long and difficult path—from a village in the Udmurt forests to triumph in Riga. In the Urals, he worked at a prefabrication plant, in a geological expedition, and served in the Air Force as a VHF radio mechanic at a ground station in the Odessa Military District.

In 1965, Alexander Blinov published his first half-page piece in the district newspaper Defender of the Motherland and even received a fee of 1.40 rubles. For his next publication—a feuilleton about improper storage practices at a local vegetable depot—he received as much as 37 rubles, equivalent to ten soldiers’ monthly salaries.

Blinov was issued a certificate as a freelance correspondent of the newspaper. He wrote extensively and, alongside his service in the settlement of Limansky, completed the 11th grade at an evening secondary school at the Odessa House of Officers. He received his school certificate in Ukrainian.

After completing his military service, he returned to Chelyabinsk, where his mother was living, and became a literary contributor, later heading the industrial department of the newspaper Karabashsky Rabochy. In 1968, he enrolled in the Faculty of Journalism at Ural State University in Sverdlovsk.

His journalistic career truly took off when, as a student, he began writing for the youth newspaper Smena about student construction brigades. After his second year, he was already editor of the press center “Planeta,” devoted entirely to this topic. He earned substantial money for those times, but after disagreements with the publishers, he moved to the newspaper Pod znamenem Lenina in Pervouralsk, which was published five times a week with a circulation of 70,000 copies.

In 1971, he married Valentina Korchagina, and in 1972 the couple moved to Riga, where his wife’s parents lived.

That same year, just two days after receiving his Riga residence registration, he was hired by Sovetskaya Molodezh as a production editor. Thus began the path of the future editor-in-chief, a position he assumed in 1983, having previously worked his way through all editorial ranks.

His management style was by no means authoritarian or oppressive; he respected each journalist and their individual creative voice. Under his leadership, both the newspaper and its staff flourished in every sense. An atmosphere of friendship, mutual understanding, and cooperation prevailed. At the same time, despite his democratic approach, Blinov knew how to defend the interests of the newspaper, his staff, and freedom of speech before higher authorities, for which he was repeatedly summoned to party and Komsomol bodies.

SM ceased publication in 1999. Its successor became the newspaper Vesti Segodnya, which remains the only daily Russian-language newspaper in Latvia. In 2000, Alexander Blinov returned there as editor-in-chief, and in 2013 he stepped down.

Today, A. Blinov is retired but continues to write literary essays and short stories for Russian-language publications.

His wife Valentina worked as a press secretary at the company Geron. Their daughter Olga, born in 1975, is a leading specialist at an international company in London. They have a granddaughter, Masha.

He has no state awards.

Natalia Lebedeva