This story is almost beyond comprehension, for those of us of a certain age.  Anyone, that is, old enough to remember the Evil Empire that was the Soviet Union.

Now, not even 20 years after the Soviet Union fell, to the delight of the free world, a former agent of one of its more feared and ruthless organizations, the KGB … seems interested in saving print journalism in England.

Really?

Really.

The former KGB man in question, Alexander Lebedev, is buying the Daily Independent, a nice but not particularly relevant and thoroughly unprofitable broadsheet English daily … for one pound.

He already owns the London Evening Standard, the city’s PM newspaper for decades. And it is doing well since he took over and turned it into a free newspaper, making money on advertisers interested in rocketing circulation numbers.

This whole story verges on the unfathomable. Especially when we have the new owner talking about the importance of the print media. Yes. A KGB man.

To wit: “I do not treat newspapers as business,” Lebedev said. “I treat them as my responsibility.”

He added:

“I think newspapers are the only instrument which, through investigative reporting, can ferret out everything about international corruption.”

What the …?

And right about now, thousands of print journalists at hundreds of struggling newspapers in the Western World are saying, “Can this former Russian spy come buy us,  too?”

Think about this, and you can see how he might have arrived at his conclusion that newspapers are … important.

He worked for the KGB, and the KGB did not hire stupid people. He also worked in London. He saw how powerful ideas can be, especially when they are allowed to ferment in the hothouse of a free press.

He came from a country where the media were toadies and lick-spittles. Derided by their own readers  as undependable. Untrustworthy.

It’s possible to imagine such a man, who manages to make a few rubles in various business, after the Soviet breakup … might feel a bit nostalgic about British journalism and be interested in getting into it.

The New York Times has noticed, and like most everyone else looking at these developments … still wonders where the down side is. Lebedev values newspapers, believes in their First Amendment rights and responsibilities, apparently doesn’t interfere editorially …

So far, what he has done is save the Evening Standard and the Independent from extinction. No mogul in England could be bothered to do that. But Alexander Lebedev is all over this.

As a print guy, I know tens of thousands of journalists must have, over the past five years, welcomed the idea of Satan owning the newspaper — as long as the Prince of Darkness was willing to put out a decent product and not interfere in the news pages.

Alexander Lebedev may not have been much higher on the scale of evil, back in his KGB days. But for the hacks and editors at the Independent, given a reprieve from summary unemployment … let’s assume they’re thinking tovarich! when it comes to Alexander Lebedev about now.