Abstract
By 1932 the Soviet reader, as featured in Soviet public discourse, was a thoroughly ideologized and homogenized figure. We now need to examine how this myth of the Soviet reader stood up to the real behaviour and values of the post-Stalin reading public and in what ways the practices and representations of reading changed from the mid-1950s onwards.
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Notes and References
L. Gudkov and B. Dubin, Literatura kak sotsial’nyi institut, Moscow, 1994, p. 295.
Details on decrees in this and the preceding paragraph are taken from O partiinoi i sovetskoi pechati, radioveshchanii i televidenii: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov, Moscow, 1972.
T. Zueva, ‘Byt’ sovetchikom, pomoshchnikom millionov chitatelei’, Chto chitat’, 1958, 1. Compare the similarly anthropomorphic relations English people are supposed (in the normative sense) to have with their pets.
In her innovative account of the social psychology of post-Stalin Russia, Elena Zubkova draws heavily on letters to Novyi mir, Oktiabr’ and other publications. She observes that the authors of these letters tend increasingly to construct themselves as individuals (lichnosti): see E. Zubkova, Obshchestvo i reformy 1945–1964, Moscow, 1993. Contrast Zubkova’s conclusions with those of Sheila Fitzpatrick on letter-writers of the 1930s in’ supplicants and Citizens: Public Letter-Writing in Soviet Russia in the 1930s’, Slavic Review, vol. 55, no. 1, 1996. Fitzpatrick finds that authors of letters to public insti-tutions in the 1930s, although their writings were ‘essentially a form of individual, private communication with the authorities on topics both private and public’ (p. 80), generally ‘tailored their self-representation to a conventional social stereotype’ (p. 81); letter-writing was thus often a form of social ‘role-playing’ (see p. 95). For more on letter-writing in the post-Stalin and glasnost periods, see Chapter 5.
RGALI, f. 1702, op. 9c, ed. khr. 135,1. 5
RGALI, f. 1702, op. 9c, ed. khr. 165, 1. 56.
There were innumerable Soviet practical handbooks (metodichki) on readers’ conferences: see, for example, E. Diadchenko, Chitatel’skie konferentsii po proizvedeniiam khudozhestvennoi literatury, Frunze, 1982; and Chitatel’skii spros i ego formirovanie v biblioteke, Riga, 1982. It should be noted that readers’ conferences made a brief comeback in the glasnost period: their mobilizing ethos fitted in very well with that of perestroika itself.
See M. Kim (ed.), Kul’turnaia revoliutsiia 1917–1965 gg., Moscow, 1967.
From the late 1960s anxiety was expressed in some quarters that social modernization might be accompanied by cultural degradation, as was claimed to have been the case in the West: for a survey of these opinions, see ch. 9, ‘Is the Soviet Union Really Immune?’, in K. Mehnert, Moscow and the New Left, Berkeley, Calif., 1975.
For more on the time-budget surveys and exhortations of this period, see J. Brine, ‘Reading as a Leisure Pursuit in the USSR’, in J. Brine, M. Perrie and A. Sutton (eds), Home, School and Leisure in the Soviet Union, London, 1980. An example of Soviet time-budget research is L. A. Gordon and E. V. Klopov, Chelovek posle raboty: SotsiaVnye problemy byta i vnerabochego vremeni, Moscow, 1972.
The main research programmes of the 1960s and 1970s are summarized in O. S. Chubar’ian, Chelovek i kniga: SotsiaVnye problemy chteniia, Moscow, 1978, pp. 24–9; and in Gregory Walker, ‘Readerships in the USSR: Some Evidence from Post-War Studies’, Oxford Slavonic Papers, vol. 19, 1986, pp. 159–62.
Note, for example, Chubar’ian’s account of his research objectives: ‘to reveal the spiritual profile of the Soviet reader — a reader of a new type, born of socialist society — and the breadth and variety of his interests’ (Chelovek i kniga, p. 24).
See A. Reitblat, ‘Pravo na vnimanie’, LO, no. 3, 1981.
See, for example, Sovetskii chitateV: Opytkonkretno-sotsiologicheskogo issle-dovaniia, Moscow, 1968; Kniga i chtenie v zhizni neboVshikh gorodov, Moscow, 1973; Kniga i chtenie v zhizni sovetskogo sela, Moscow, 1978; M. Afanas’ev, Za knigoi: Mesto chteniia v zhizni sovetskogo rabochego, Moscow, 1987. For more on the sociological surveys of the glasnost period, see later chapters.
For an example of these questionnaires, see Afanas’ev, Za knigoi, pp. 107–15.
Kniga i chtenie v zhizni neboVshikh gorodov, p. 74. The authors of this book draw particular attention to the reading of fiction because this makes for an especially advantageous comparison with the West, where only ‘3-5 per cent of the reading public’ match the ‘constancy’ of their Soviet counterparts.
The Soviet debate on television dates from the early 1960s: see E. Efimov, ‘Kino-i telekritika: ot krizisa k perestroike’, in A. Zis’ (ed.), Khudozhestvennaia kritika i obshchestvennoe mnenie, Moscow, 1992. Note also B. Firsov (ed.), Massovaia kommunikatsiia v usloviiakh nauchno-tekhnicheskoi revoliutsii, Leningrad, 1981.
For a useful treatment of this subject which focuses on one collection of essays by prominent Soviet literary scholars, see W. M. Todd, ‘Recent Soviet Studies in Sociology of Literature: Confronting a Disenchanted World’, Stanford Slavic Studies, vol. 1, 1987.
V. Asmus, ‘Chtenie kak trud i tvorchestvo’, Voprosy literatury, no. 2, 1961.
See S. Rassadin, Kniga pro chitatelia, Moscow, 1965; similar is V. Kantorovich, Literatura i chitatel’, Moscow, 1976.
Note, for example, V. Prozorov (ed.), Literaturnoe proizvedenie i chitateVskoe vospriiatie, Kalinin, 1982; G. Ishchuk (ed.), Chitatel’ v tvorcheskom soznanii russkikh pisatelei, Kalinin, 1986; O. Soloukhina, ‘Chitatel’ i literaturnyi prot-sess’, in Iu. Borev (ed.), Metodologiia analiza literaturnogo protsessa, Moscow, 1989.
See L. Kogan and L. Ivan’ko, ‘Vychisliat’, chtoby sporit”, LO, no. 4, 1974, for a pathbreaking, if somewhat reductionist application of literary content-analysis; note also the critical response this article met in V. Kovskii,’ sotsiologiia literatury ili sotsiologiia protiv literatury?’, LO, no. 8, 1974.
Note, for example, B. Dubin, ‘Kak zainteresovannye partnery’, LO, no. 4, 1975.
The importance of such letters in reinforcing a typology of readership is mentioned by Vera Dunham (In Stalin’s Time, p. 26). It should be noted that this controlled forum for the expression of the Soviet reader’s views survived until much later in the Soviet period: note the rubrics ‘Fakul’tet chitatel’skogo masterstva’ and ‘Vash literaturnyi geroi’ in Literaturnoe obozrenie in the 1970s. For a good example of the genre, see ‘Folkner. Istoki slozhnosti’, LO, no. 9, 1974: in this article readers express their frustration and bewilderment at the ‘difficulty’ of Faulkner.
Analysis of these results is to be found in Iu. Davydov, ‘I edinomyshlenniki i opponenty’, LO, no. 5, 1978, pp. 100–7.
These are the words of A. Bocharov, quoted in Iu. Dayvdov, ‘Zachem kritik?...’, LO, no. 3, 1980, pp. 98–109.
For more detail on this question, see M. Friedberg, A Decade of Euphoria: Western Literature in Post-Stalin Russia, 1954–64, Bloomington, Ind., 1977. On the ideologically correct adventure novels of the early Soviet period, see R. Russell, ‘Red Pinkertonism: An Aspect of Soviet Literature of the 1920s’, Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 60, no. 3, 1982.
See N. Khrenov, ‘Publika i kritika v kontekste otnoshenii kul’tury i gosu-darstva’, in A. Zis’ (ed.), Khudozhestvennaia kritika i obshchestvennoe mnenie, Moscow, 1992, p. 127.
See N. Naumova, ‘Detektiv trebuet vnimaniia’, Neva, no. 7, 1971; V. Revich, ‘Zapretit’ ili ob”iasnit’?’, Sem’ia i shkola, no. 7, 1972; Iu. Sobolevskaia, ‘Podrostok i prikliuchencheskaia kniga’, Bibliotekar’, no. 8, 1971; S. Filiushkina, ‘Detektiv: Nemnogo o zhanre’, Pod”em, no. 3, 1972; V. Kovskii, ‘Bez skidok na zhanr’, LO, no. 2, 1973; M. Druzina, ‘Detektiv: igra ili iskusstvo?’, LO, no. 1, 1975. Note also the rubric ‘Detektiv: i sotsial’nost’ i khudozhestvennost’ in LG, 1971–2.
The official Soviet abhorrence of ostrosiuzhetnye zhanry was further motivated by a number of more complex considerations. Literature of this kind broke a Soviet taboo by depicting active individuals (rather than positive heroes) taking decisions in unpredictable (rather than historically and socially determined) situations. For an interesting treatment of these questions, see B. Dubin, ‘Ispytanie na sostoiatel’nost’: K sotsiologicheskoi poetike russkogo romana-boevika’, NLO, no. 22, 1996, esp. pp. 270–1.
For a good overview, see Leonid Geller, Vselennaia za predelom dogmy: Razmyshleniia o sovetskoi fantastike, London, 1985. This book has a useful bibliography of Soviet articles on science fiction.
See A. Kobzeva, ‘Liubiteli fantastiki v zerkale sotsiologicheskikh issle-dovanii’, in S. Khanzhin (ed.), Kniga. Obshchestvo. Perestroika, Moscow, 1990.
For further details on this survey, see two articles by I. Gol’denberg: ‘Anatomiia knizhnogo defitsita’, SI, no. 6, 1987; and ‘Chitatel’skie strasti 60-kh godov’, SI, no. 6, 1989.
See Kniga i chtenie v zhizni nebol’shikh gorodov, pp. 73–98.
S. Shvedov, ‘Knigi, kotorye my vybirali’, Pogruzhenie v triasinu, Moscow, 1991. Similar conclusions can be drawn from K. Mehnert, The Russians and Their Favorite Books, Stanford, Calif., 1983.
See V. D. Stel’makh, ‘Kakaia kniga u vas v rukakh’, LO, no. 5, 1973, p. 103. Stel’makh’s conclusions are based on the study of reading patterns in small towns that was written up in Kniga i chtenie v zhizni neboVshikh gorodov.
This and the previous paragraph rely heavily on chapter drafts from Catriona Kelly, Refining Russia: Gender, Manners and Morals from Catherine to Yeltsin (forthcoming).
These developments are summarized in A. Reitblat, ‘Osnovnye tendentsii razvitiia massovogo chteniia v SSSR’, in V. Stel’makh (ed.), Tendentsii razvi-tiia chteniia v sotsialisticheskikh stranakh, Moscow, 1983.
Note especially the following articles by Vladimir Shlapentokh: ‘Nekotorye metodologicheskie i metodicheskie problemy sotsiologii pechati’, Problemy sotsiologii pechati, vol. 1, Novosibirsk, 1969; ‘K voprosu ob izuchenii esteticheskikh vkusov chitatelia gazety’, Problemy sotsiologii pechati, vol. 2, Novosibirsk, 1970; ‘Rost urovnia obrazovaniia i otnoshenie k sredstvam massovoi informatsii’, Problemy sotsiologii i psikhologii chteniia, Moscow, 1975.
On the systematic non-recognition of readers’ tastes, see L. Gudkov and B. Dubin, ‘Literaturnaia kul’tura: Protsess i ratsion’, Druzhba narodov, no. 2, 1988.
Friedberg, Russian Classics, p. x. In 1912–13 Russian publishing actually compared very favourably with the West.
Boris I. Gorokhoff, Publishing in the U.S.S.R., Bloomington, Ind., 1959, p. 4.
Note the 55-volume edition of Lenin in Vietnamese announced in 1973, the publication and export to Vietnam of 450 000 books in 1975, and the 50-volume edition of Marx and Engels in English announced in 1975: see, respectively, KO, no. 20, 1973; no. 17, 1976; and no. 2, 1975.
G. Walker, Soviet Book Publishing, Cambridge, 1978, pp. 6–9.
On pricing, see ibid., pp. 9–11.
The most thorough indictment of the ‘catastrophic’ state of the centralized publishing system is L. Gudkov and B. Dubin, ‘Paralich gosudarstvennogo knigoizdaniia: ideologiia i praktika’ (1989) in their Literatura kak sotsiaVnyi institut, Moscow, 1994. The extreme institutionalized conservatism within Soviet publishing houses is explained in Gregory Walker, ‘Personnel Policy in the Control of Soviet Book Publishing’, in Marianna Tax Choldin (ed.), Proceedings of the Second International Conference of Slavic Librarians and Information Specialists, New York, 1986.
For more detail on the operation of Kniga — pochtoi and of the book trade in general, see Gorokhoff, Publishing in the U.S.S.R., ch. 9; and M. Arbuzov, Knizhnaia torgovlia v SSSR, Moscow, 1976.
For a case-study in the problems of cultural construction through the book trade, see G. Ambernadi,’ sem’ siuzhetov iz Navoi’, LO, no. 2, 1973.
See B. Bank and A. Vilenkin, Rabochii pokupatel’ knigi, Leningrad, 1930. For a post-Stalin equivalent, see B. Reznikov, Rabota prodavtsa v knizhnom magazine, Moscow, 1957.
See O. Orlova, ‘Izdaniia proshlykh let mogut byt’ realizovany’, and M. Gorshkov, ‘Mezhmagazinnyi obmen’, KT, no. 1, 1964; N. Grekhovodov, “Tovarnye ostatki i mery predotvrashcheniiia ikh rosta’, KT, no. 7, 1964.
A. Burlaenko and V. Revitskii, ‘Chto daet khoroshaia vitrina’, KT, no. 2, 1964; N. Kamianov, ‘Prodolzhaem rasskaz o vitrine’, KT, no. 12, 1964.
N. Voronenko, ‘Kommissionnaia torgovlia bukinisticheskimi izdaniiami’, KT, no. 2, 1964.
P. Ivanov, ‘V bor’be za snizhenie ostatkov’, KT, no. 7, 1964.
An exception is the very upbeat BAM — knizhnyi, Khabarovsk, 1986. The cultural colonization of far-flung outposts of the Soviet empire retained its pafos to the very end.
See A. White, De-Stalinization and the House of Culture, London, 1990.
For a clear account of the situation, see M. Smorodinskaia, ‘Domashniaia biblioteka serediny 80-kh godov’; and A. Reitblat, ‘Biblioteka lichnaia i bib-lioteka obshchestvennaia: problemy spetsifiki’, both articles in Analiz-prognoz: Informatsionno-analiticheskii biulleten’ ‘Kniga’, no. 2, 1990.
T. Gurtovenko, ‘“Bibliotechnaia seriia”: voprosy vypuska i raspredeleniia’, KIM, vol. 54, 1987, p. 30.
A sure sign of Dumas’s adoption by the Soviet reading public is the fact that his name began to decline grammatically in Russia, as in the question asked at the back of a queue, ‘Kto za Diumoi krainii?’ (see A. Arkanov’s sketch, ‘Eruditsiia s shin’onom’, V mire knig, no. 4, 1978).
On book-exchange, see B. Kats and S. Makarenkov, ‘Rynok “svobodnogo knigoobmena” v 1986 godu: Analiz situatsii’, SI, no. 2, 1987; and L. Borusiak, ‘Tselevoi knigoobmen: kharakternoe cherty segodnia’, KIM, vol. 57, 1989.
The head of Goskomizdat in 1982 responded to such misgivings in an account of the first attempts to regulate book exchange: see the interview with G. P. Safronov, ‘Schitaias’ s mneniem knigoliubov’, V mire knig, no. 4, 1982, pp. 44–6.
Note the handbook for librarians, IspoVzovanie seriinykh izdanii istoricheskoi tematiki v rabote bibliotek, Moscow, 1991.
See V. Shchepotkin, ‘Dinamika populiarnosti serii khudozhestvenno-dokumental’nykh povestei “Plamennye revoliutsionery”’, Kniga. Obshchestvo. Perestroika, Moscow, 1990.
Boris Dubin has offered an interesting theoretical analysis of book-collecting as a means and symbol of socialization: see his ‘Kniga i dom (K sotsiologii knigosobiratel’stva)’, in N. Efimova (ed.), Chto my chitaem? Kakie my?, St Petersburg, 1993.
The pioneers here were the satirical journals of the mid-1920s: see O. Ia. Goikhman, ‘Knizhnoe prilozhenie kak tip izdaniia (na primere bibliotek satiry i iumora 1920-kh godov)’, unpublished kandidatskaia dissertatsiia, Moscow, 1975.
For more on how and why Roman-gazeta was set up, see ChitateV i pisatel’, no. 40, 1928, p. 2. For an early survey of its readership, see E. Levitskaia, ‘Opyt izucheniia chitatel’skikh interesov (Po dannym ankety Roman-gazety)’, Na literaturnom postu, no. 2, 1929. For details on its importance as a provider of literature to a mass provincial audience, see Kniga i chtenie v zhizni nebol’shikh gorodov, pp. 75–7.
See the minutes of the general editorial meetings in, for example, RGALI, f. 613 (Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury), op. 9, ed. khr. 2259. A satirical assessment of Roman-gazeta is made in Nataliia Il’ina’s ‘Literatura i massovyi tirazh: O nekotorykh vypuskakh Roman-gazety’ (1969), in her Belogorskaia krepost’: Satiricheskaia proza 1955–1985, Moscow, 1989.
See A. Levinson, ‘Makulatura i knigi: Analiz sprosa i predlozheniia v odnoi iz sfer sovremennoi knigotorgovli’, in V. Stel’makh (ed.), Chtenie: Problemy i razrabotki, Moscow, 1985; and the same author’s’ starye knigi, novye chitateli’, SI, no. 3, 1987.
Viacheslav Baskov, ‘Magazin 100-bis’, V mire knig, no. 12, 1988.
See A. Belikova and A. Shokhin, ‘Chernyi rynok: liudi, veshchi, fakty’, Og, no. 36, 1987, p. 7.
G. Iakimov, ‘Chernyi rynok v defitsitarnoi situatsii’, in V. Stel’makh (ed.), Kniga i chtenie v zerkale sotsiologii, Moscow, 1990, p. 139.
For more detail on the black market in books, see (besides Iakimov) John and Carol Garrard,’ soviet Book Hunger’, Problems of Communism, vol. 34, no. 5, 1985.
This is not to suggest that books had not been integrated into the economy of shortage earlier in the Soviet period: V. Lebedev-Kumach’s article ‘O knigakh i prochem’ (Krokodil, no. 34, 1931, p. 5) shows that there was some kind of black market in books as early as the 1930s.
L. Gudkov and B. Dubin, ‘Literature and Social Process: Soviet Scene’, unpublished paper presented at IFLA General Conference and Council Meeting, Moscow, 1991, p. 11.
This is the estimate of O. Vostokov in ‘Mozhno li povliiat’ na “chernyi rynok”?’, Ekslibris, no. 1, 1989, p. 23.
Bukinisticheskaia torgovlia is in fact quite a useful barometer of Soviet cultural life: note Tamara Sokolova, ‘Razvitie sovetskoi bukinisticheskoi tor-govli v Moskve v period stroitel’stva osnov sotsializma (1917–1941)’, unpublished kandidatskaia dissertatsiia, Moscow, 1988. For an overview of the Soviet period, see A. Govorov and A. Doroshevich (eds), Bukinisticheskaia torgovlia: Uchebnik dlia studentov vuzov, Moscow, 1990. A campaign was launched against book collecting in the late 1920s; in the 1930s the state actually bought old books from the population with the aim of redistributing them; price guidelines for the second-hand book trade were only established in the 1940s.
On the fate of bibliofil’stvo in the immediate post-revolutionary period, see O. Lasunskii,’ stanovlenie sovetskogo bibliofil’stva’, in A. Sidorov (ed.), Kniga i kul’tura, Moscow, 1979. Book-collectors in the modern world have often had to struggle to legitimize their hobby, since their professed intellectual/aesthetic motivations can very easily be impugned by accusations of vulgar acquisitiveness. See, for example, the ‘unexplanatory introduction’ to P. Jordan-Smith, For the Love of Books: The Adventures of an Impecunious Collector, New York, 1934; or, in the early Soviet context, M. N. Kufaev’s painstaking argument in Bibliofiliia i bibliomaniia (psikhoflziologiia bibliofil’stva), Leningrad, 1927.
P. Berkov, Istoriia sovetskogo bibliofil’stva (1917–1967), Moscow, 1971, p. 207.
Svetlana Boym has analyzed these interiors from the position of an unusually well-informed social anthropologist: see her Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia, Cambridge, Mass., 1994, esp. pp. 155–7.
I. Bestuzhev-Lada, ‘Nekotorye perspektivy razvitiia knizhnogo dela v prob-lematike sotsial’nogo prognozirovaniia’, KIM, vol. 55, 1987. A less sardonic analysis is provided in V. F. Rozhankovskii, ‘Printsipy ansamblevosti v slozhenii sovremennogo sovetskogo zhilogo inter’era’, in KuVtura zhilogo inter’era, Moscow, 1966, p. 74.
Typical of this attitude is V. Osipov, Kniga v vashem dome, Moscow, 1967.
See A. Reitblat, Ot Bovy k Bal’montu, Moscow, 1991, p. 103.
For more on this particular point of comparison, see Iurii Gerchuk, ‘Kul’tura massovoi knigi’, in Kniga. Obshchestvo. Perestroika, Moscow, 1990. Russian books sometimes send out conflicting signs to the reader: for example, they might combine the brightly-coloured, glossy cover of a mass-circulation paperback with the high-quality paper and circulation of a work of specialist literature.
KO, no. 24, 1986, p. 6.
See L. Gudkov and B. Dubin, ‘Obraz knigi i ee sotsial’naia adresatsiia’, in V. Stel’makh (ed.), Biblioteka i chtenie: problemy i issledovaniia, St Petersburg, 1995, esp. pp. 79–82.
A typical example is Iu. Andreev, ‘Pochemu ne umiraiut skazki?’ (introducing a new rubric, ‘Kul’tura: narodnost’ i massovost’), LG, 12 May 1982.
For more on this idea, see M. Iampol’skii, ‘Rossiia: kul’tura i subkul’tury’, in N. Azhgikhina (ed.), Novaia volna: Russkaia kul’tura i subkul’tury na rubezhe 80–90 gg., Moscow, 1994.
Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money (revised version, 1907), ed. David Frisby, London and New York, 1990, p. 72. The virtue of Simmel’s analysis is precisely that he begins by considering the relationship between value and exchange in general, and only then proceeds to monetary forms of the latter.
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Lovell, S. (2000). The Arrival of the New Reader: The Post-Stalin Period. In: The Russian Reading Revolution. Studies in Russia and East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230596450_3
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