Dusko Doder

Dusko Doder
Born	(1937-07-22)July 22, 1937 Sarajevo, Drina Banovina, Yugoslavia
Died	September 10, 2024(2024-09-10) (aged 87) Chiang Mai, Thailand
Education	Washington University in St. Louis (BA) Columbia University (MS, MA)
Occupation	Journalist

Dusko Doder (July 22, 1937 – September 10, 2024) was an American journalist. He was the head of the Moscow bureau of The Washington Post from 1981 until 1985.

Early life and education

Doder was born on July 22, 1937, in Sarajevo to Vaso Doder, a pharmacist, and Marija (Gjurhu) Doder, a homemaker. He was raised in Yugoslavia and spoke Russian fluently. He and his family lived through the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia and the dictatorship of Josip Tito. Doder learned English from listening to radio broadcasts from the BBC and Voice of America. He later spent a summer living in the United Kingdom. He wrote for a local paper while attending high school in Sarajevo.

Doder's father encouraged him to attend medical school. While studying in Vienna, Doder played piano at a press club to make money. There, in 1958, he met American journalist and Associated Press correspondent Clyde Farnsworth, who went on to become his mentor. In 1959, Farnsworth paid for Doder to travel by ship to the United States. Once he arrived in the U.S., Doder stayed with relatives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Doder earned a bachelors degree from Washington University in St. Louis (1962) and two master's degrees from Columbia University (journalism in 1964, international affairs in 1965).

Career

Doder's first stint in journalism was as a reporter for the Associated Press, working out of New Hampshire and Albany, New York. In 1968 United Press International hired Doder to work at its Moscow bureau.

In 1970 Doder was hired by The Washington Post, where he worked as its Canada correspondent. In 1973 the Post asked him to move to its Belgrade bureau, where he would cover Eastern Europe, including his home country of Yugoslavia. Doder published his first book, The Yugoslavs, in 1978.

Doder became bureau of The Washington Post's Moscow bureau in 1981. During his time in Moscow, Doder developed a network of connections and sources "unmatched by most other correspondents" through his familiarity with Slavic and Soviet cultures and the Russian language. In February 1984, after observing hundreds of lights on at the Soviet Defense Ministry and a change to classical music on radio and television, he surmised correctly that Yuri Andropov, the then-current leader of the Soviet Union, was seriously ill or dead, which allowed the newspaper to run a story on Andropov's death on February 10, 1984, prior to the Kremlin's announcement of his death later that day. Doder left Moscow in 1985, after which he took a hiatus from his work at the Post. He published his second book, Shadows and Whispers: Power Politics Inside the Kremlin From Brezhnev to Gorbachev, in 1986. Doder left the Post for good in 1987.

From 1987 to 1990, Doder worked at U.S. News & World Report as Beijing correspondent, where he covered the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. In the 1990s Doder returned to Belgrade, where he wrote for various publications on the political and social shifts occurring during Yugoslavia's breakup.

In 1992 Time magazine published a story in which Soviet defector and former KGB colonel Vitaly Yurchenko suggested that Doder's successful time in Moscow was due to ties to the KGB. Investigations by the FBI, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, and The Washington Post found no evidence for the claims, and the Post continued to publicly defend Doder. Doder, who was working in Yugoslavia at the time, filed a libel suit in the United Kingdom against Time in 1993. During the legal proceedings, Doder sold his house to cover costs. In 1996, Time apologized to Doder and paid him $262,000. Doder's career never fully recovered following the accusations.

Doder published a novel, The Firebird Affair, in 2011, and co-wrote a memoir with his wife, Louise Branson, The Inconvenient Journalist, which was published in 2021.

Personal life and death

Doder married twice. He had one son with his first wife, Karin Weberg Rasmussen (died 1994); the couple divorced in the early 1980s. He married his second wife, British journalist Louise Branson, in 1989, and the couple had two sons. Doder and Branson lived in Northern Virginia until 2020, when the couple moved to Thailand. Doder died from Lewy body dementia in Chiang Mai, on September 10, 2024, at the age of 87.

Books

• The Yugoslavs. New York, Toronto: Random House. 1978. ISBN 978-0394425382. Review
• Shadows and Whispers: Power Politics Inside the Kremlin From Brezhnev to Gorbachev. Random House. 1986. ISBN 978-0394549989.
• with Louise Branson, Gorbachev: Heretic in the Kremlin (1991)
• with Louise Branson Milosevic: Portrait of a Tyrant (1991)
• The Firebird Affair (2011)
• with Louise Branson, The Inconvenient Journalist (2021)

External links

• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Dusko Doder at IMDb