Every Thursday people travelled even from faraway suburbs to read the latest issue

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Every Thursday people travelled even from faraway suburbs to read the latest issue. Knowing that people had no money Yakovlev began to display all pages on the outside walls by his offices. Each week the whole edition sold out.In 1987 he published the first and uncensored Russian interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter Yakovlev abolished all the taboos. He was the first Russian editor to expose KGB deeds on the pages of a Soviet newspaper and to defend religion in the Soviet Union.I met him in July 1989 at his office. On the surface he was a quite mild and nice, highly intelligent, man but he was tough. He bitterly complained to me that he couldn't break into the KGB Archive to "expose them more" as he said "Perhaps you could, you're a British reporter," he said.

"I can't, I'll be deported," I said.In August 1991, after the failure of the anti- Gorbachev putsch, he was appointed to run the Central TV and Radio Corporation, replacing Gorbachev's choice, Leonid Kravchuk (who had actually been on the side of the putshchists). Four months later the corporation was put under the control of Boris Yeltsin. In November 1992 Yeltsin was under fire from all sides - both at home and abroad - for the first Chechen war. When he saw on television uncensored reports from South Ossetia and Ingushetia, with civilians including children and elderly people killed, the furious Yeltsin dismissed him.I saw him again at Moscow News in 1993 - he was now editing Obshchaya Gazeta, where all editors and journalists were non-party members, which would not have been possible before 1987, but still occasionally appeared at his old paper and even occupied his old office to receive visitors. He was very popular with his fellow journalists, though with a reputation for being uncompromising. I was then Moscow News' London correspondent under Victor Loshak, who replaced him. At that time his extremely handsome then 34-year old son, Vladimir, was a Moscow celebrity, being the proprietor of the seven newspapers and magazines in the powerful Kommersant group.The following year I started working for Yakovlev junior's Kommersant, a sort of Russian Financial Times.

For the first time stock exchange and company reports were printed - attracting business people from all over the country The son had followed the father.Jeanne Vronskaya. Hans Sigismund Rahmer (John Desmond Rayner), rabbi: born Berlin 30 December 1924; ordained rabbi 1953; Minister, South London Liberal Synagogue 1953-57; Associate Minister, Liberal Jewish Synagogue 1957-61, Senior Minister 1961-89 (Minister Emeritus); Lecturer in Liturgy and Rabbinic Literature, Leo Baeck College 1966-2003, Director of Studies 1966-69, Vice-President 1969-2005; Chairman, Council of Reform and Liberal Rabbis 1969-71, 1982-84, 1989-92; President, London Society of Jews and Christians 1990; CBE 1993; Honorary Life President, Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues 1994; married 1955 Jane Heilbronn (two sons, one daughter); died London 19 September 2005. John Rayner was the leader of Liberal Judaism in Great Britain, the more radical and innovative wing of Progressive Judaism in this country, established in 1902, and a worthy successor of its early leaders Israel Mattuck, the Hon Lily Montagu and the scholar C.G Montefiore. Shaped by his childhood in Berlin and the towering figure of Rabbi Leo Baeck, the leader of German Jewry, he was deeply rooted in the critical rationalism of the liberal progressive wing of German Jewish life and thought. Rayner's contributions to Anglo-Jewish life became a foundation of contemporary Judaism. While American Reform Judaism had an impact, particularly in the rabbis who came to Britain and formed the British Progressive tradition - indeed, John Rayner himself studied at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati - Rayner adopted his own approach, which owed more to Europe than to the United States.