NVC was pre-mine, and only less than half of the pre-mine were publicly destroyed.
65k were premined and 110k (65k premined + 45k instamined) destroyed. At the moment of destruction, 110k was about half of
all coins.
But it depends on your 'pre-mine' definition. NVC was announced in Russian section of Bitcointalk, just like CHNcoin was announced on a Chinese forum, but who said that coins must be announced in English?
I don't think insta-mine is as bad as pre-mine. Every coin has to start by rewarding early adopters, otherwise no one would help to promote it. If a coin start with sky high difficulty, it'll just be dead in the water with no one mining it. In the long term, the insta-mine portion is tiny compared to the total amount of coin that will be produced. You can think of the instamine as a bounty for early miners/adopters.
You can also think of the premine as a bounty for the developers. A coin can be launched at moderate difficulty if the devs release the source a month or two before launch, so that everyone can get ready, including pools.