Abstract
In the first three chapters we have had occasion to observe that reading came to the forefront of public debate in Soviet Russia at times of attempted social transformation. In the 1920s, and then in the Khrushchev era, print culture was called upon to perform a mobilizing and educative function. Glasnost offered a particular variation on this perennial Soviet theme of cultural revolution. In the 1980s the task was no longer to make Soviet society literate, as it had been in the 1920s, or simply to help it acquire the reading habit, as had been the case under Khrushchev, but rather to improve the quality of reading in Soviet society.1 The Soviet mass reading public was no longer to be kept in forced ignorance of its own history, and of the social and economic problems facing its country: it was to be provided with the information that the elite intelligentsia, thanks to samizdat and informal networks, had possessed since the 1960s. Perestroika in the cultural sphere was, in fact, nothing less than the attempted ‘massovization’ of the Soviet intelligentsia. The early stages of glasnost were outstandingly successful in this respect: an enthralling public debate began on most aspects of Soviet history and society; the circulations of the major journals shot up from hundreds of thousands to millions; Soviet society did indeed seem on its way to becoming ‘civilized’ and ‘intel-lectualized’.
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Notes and References
This shift of emphasis can be illustrated by referring to the history of Soviet sociological research, which in the 1960s and 1970s was concerned above all with the ‘extent’ of reading (rasprostranennost’ chteniid) and in the 1980s with readers’ ‘interests’ (chitatel’skii interes): compare N. Dobrynina and S. Smirnova, ‘Problematika i metodika v issledovanii rasprostranennosti cht-eniia’, in E. Khrastetskii (ed.), Problemy sotsiologii i psikhologii chteniia, Moscow, 1975, with N. Dobrynina, ‘O nekotorykh metodologicheskikh i metodicheskikh voprosakh issledovaniia problem chteniia’, in S. Khanzhin (ed.), Kniga. Obshchestvo. Perestroika, Moscow, 1990.
For a good account of Soviet debates on the intelligentsia, see M. Yanowitch, Social and Economic Inequality in the Soviet Union, London, 1977, esp. pp. 14–20.
N. Berberova, Kursiv moi: Avtobiografiia, Moscow, 1996, p. 621. Note also the selection of letters received by Berberova from samizdat readers of the book (pp. 606–11).
Here I employ a broad definition of samizdat which includes much material that not even Soviet ideologues would consider politically seditious. The main function of samizdat was to disseminate knowledge and ideas within the educated elite. By the early 1980s samizdat had quite a stable and’ systemic’ existence, as can be seen from the number of samizdat periodicals (as opposed to single editions) that emerged in the 1970s. For more detail on the reading habits of members of the intelligentsia subculture, see D. Ravinskii, ‘Chtenie v kontekste vremeni’, in N. Efimova (ed.), Chto my chitaem? Kakie my?, St Petersburg, 1993. Aleksandr Suetnov’s bibliographical guide, Samizdat (Moscow, 1992), gives a good indication of the range and scale of samizdat ‘publishing’ in the 1970s and 1980s.
Valeriia Stel’makh estimates that there were between 2 million and 2.5 million Soviet people with access to samizdat in this period: see her ‘Reading in the Context of Censorship’, Solanus, vol. 10, 1996, p. 41.
In 1988 S. Shvedov estimated the number of ‘active readers’ (that is, those who visited a bookshop no less often than once a week) at no more than 20 million: see the unpublished referat Kniga v sovremennom obshchestve, Moscow, 1988, p. 51. Stel’makh puts the figure somewhat higher, at 40–50 million (see ‘Reading in the Context of Censorship’, p. 41).
On this point, note the opinion of Harold Perkin, who has made a wide-ranging study of ‘professional society’ in the modern world. Perkin claims that the Soviet Union was ‘in some ways the first professional society. If that society is defined as the rise to dominance of the professional elites and the displacement of their landed and capitalist rivals, then the bureaucratic state and command economy that Lenin and Stalin built between the 1917 Revolution and the Second World War must qualify as the pioneer of one extreme, admittedly pathological, species of professional society’ (The Third Revolution: Professional Elites in the Modern World, London and New York, 1996, p. 123).
On which, see S. Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia, Ithaca, NY, 1992.
For more detail on the real conditions of life for the Soviet intelligentsia in the post-Stalin period, see V. Shlapentokh, Soviet Intellectuals and Political Power, London, 1990. A contrasting but complementary account of the culture of the 1960s generation can be found in P. Vail’ and A. Genis, 60-e: Mir sovetskogo cheloveka, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1988.
A good example is the guitar poetry of Vysotskii and others: see ‘Magnitizdat’, ch. 4, in G. S. Smith, Songs to Seven Strings: Russian Guitar Poetry and Soviet ‘Mass Song’, Bloomington, Ind., 1984.
Aleksandr Iakovlev, quoted in S. Cohen and K. vanden Heuvel, Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev’s Reformers, New York, 1989, p. 64.
The inability of the intelligentsia’s neformaly and other political groupings to build a broad popular base has been analyzed in Judith Devlin’s The Rise of the Russian Democrats: The Causes and Consequences of the Elite Revolution, Aldershot, 1995.
See J. Graffy, ‘The Literary Press’, in J. Graffy and G. Hosking (eds), Culture and the Media in the USSR Today, London, 1989.
The Soviet reading public’s predilection for belletristika from the 1920s onwards is analyzed in A. Reitblat, ‘Osnovnye tendentsii razvitiia massovogo chteniia v SSSR’, in N. Kartashov (ed.), Tendentsii razvitiia cht-eniia v sotsialisticheskikh stranakh, Moscow, 1983.
Note K. Mehnert, The Russians and Their Tavorite Books, Stanford, Calif., 1983.
See A. Blium, ‘Zakat Glavlita: Kak razrushalas’ sistema sovetskoi tsenzury. Dokumental’naia khronika 1985–1991 gg.’, KIM, vol. 71, 1995.
See T. Kuznetsova (ed.), V pomoshch’ bukinistu: RekomendateVnyi bibliograficheskii spisok, Moscow, 1986, which contains bibliographies of articles on the second-hand book trade (pp. 10–14) and book exchange (pp. 15–16); note also A. Govorov (ed.), Kniga i sotsiaVnyi progress. Piataia Vsesoiuznaia nauchnaia konferentsiia po problemam knigovedeniia: Sektsiia knizhnoi torgovli, Moscow, 1984.
My main source base for the following account is Knizhnoe obozrenie. This weekly newspaper was the organ jointly of Goskomizdat and of the Society of Book-lovers and is the best place to look for this kind of discussion. A self-justificatory overview of the measures taken to revitalize the book trade is provided by Iu. Sapozhnikov (director of Soiuzkniga) in ‘Perestroika v knizhnoi torgovle’, in S. Khanzhin (ed.), Kniga. Obshchestvo. Perestroika, Moscow, 1990.
‘Po veleniiu serdtsa’, KO, no. 2, 1986, p. 4. The establishment of a school library using a private collection was one of the finest cultural deeds possible for a Soviet intelligent: perhaps the best-known example is Kornei Chukovskii, who opened a children’s library at his dacha in Peredelkino.
See ‘Prodlit’ zhizn’ knigi’, KO, no. 12, 1986, p. 14 and KO, no. 13, 1986.
See ‘Kul’tura knizhnogo sobiratel’stva’, KO, no. 34, 1986, p. 14; and V. Torchilin, ‘Chitateli i sobirateli — gde granitsa?’, KO, no. 48, 1986. The unsophisticated Soviet book-collector is satirized in a cartoon in KO, no. 19, 1987, p. 5, which has the caption ‘Give me something classic, about eight roubles’ worth’ (Mne chto-nibud’ iz klassikov, rublei na vosem’). On the Soviet intelligentsia’s suspicion of the cultural nouveaux riches who supposedly bought books as wallpaper, see M. Smorodinskaia, ‘Domashniaia biblioteka serediny 80-kh godov’, Analiz-prognoz: Informatsionno-analiticheskii biulleten’ ‘Kniga’, no. 2, 1990, p. 6.
An interesting source on the symbolic cultural values attached to reading as they varied through the Soviet period is N. Baburina, B. Kanevskii and V. Turchin (eds), Kniga v russkoi i sovetskoi zhivopisi, Moscow, 1989. Pictures from the 1920s and 1930s emphasize the dynamism and collectivism of reading: books are shown on the move, in collective use. By the 1960s and 1970s readers are more often than not still and solitary, or at least in a domestic rather than a public setting.
On this, see also I. Koval’chenko, ‘Komu i zachem nuzhen Solov’ev?’, KO, no. 8, 1987, p. 3. This article makes the very reasonable argument that it is not a wise use of stretched resources for millions of Soviet families to have multi-volume academic editions of Kliuchevskii and Solov’ev.
See, for example, A. Govorov, ‘Programmirovannoe tsenoobrazovanie: bukinisticheskaia redkost”, KO, no. 4, 1986, p. 10. Besides pricing, the methods devised to stimulate the second-hand trade included ‘competi-tions’, with desirable books as rewards for readers who brought in the greatest quantity of old books: see L. Gol’denberg and I. Kirillova, ‘Konkursy na luchshego sdatchika, ili uzakonennyi variant “chernogo rynka”’, KO, no. 20, 1986, p. 15.
See L. Vladimirova, ‘Estafeta priniata’, KO, no. 28, 1986, p. 10. The new system had been pioneered in Minsk and was dubbed the belorusskii variant.
See the resolution of 29 September 1988, ‘O sovershenstvovanii organizatsii bukinisticheskoi torgovli’, in Razvitie demokratizatsii v knigoizdanii: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov, Moscow, 1989.
See P. Rozhkov, ‘Shtamp “pogasheniia”’, KO, no. 42, 1988, p. 2. The subse-quent history of the second-hand book trade under glasnost is assessed in Bukinisticheskaia torgovlia v 1989–1990 gg., Moscow, 1991.
V. Zaitsev, O. Iazev, ‘Tri mushketera protiv... Vinni-pukha: Novye formy knigoobmena’, KO, no. 6, 1986, p. 15.
See ‘Eshche raz o knigoobmene’, KO, no. 31, 1986, p. 14; and V. Ogryzko, ‘Knigoobmen: millionnaia pribyl”, KO, no. 41, 1986, p. 14.
N. Kizub, ‘Kak likvidirovat’ knizhnyi defitsit’, KO, no. 16, 1987, p. 2.
The rubric first appeared under a different name (‘Chitatel’skii knigoobmen’) in KO, no. 33, 1968. It is noteworthy that as late as 1991 the suggestion was heard to gauge the demand for books by a reiting knigoobmena (book exchange ratings): see B. Kats, ‘Naturoobmen kak instrument poznaniia’, KO, no. 7, 1991, p. 6.
For a description of this practice, see’ soiuz: kniga i “Soiuzkniga”’, KO, no. 28, 1989, p. 2. Books were also ‘rented out’ at bibliotechno-prokatnye punkty, a system first noted in Dnepropetrovsk in 1988. Like so many of these forms of book circulation, this was a camouflaged market mechanism: in many cases, the deposit was set lower than the real market value of the book, so readers often did not bother to return their books.
See ‘Auktsion? Auktsion!’, KO, no. 6, 1987, p. 15, ‘Auktsion sostoialsia’, KO, no. 16, 1987, p. 16; and I. Zinurov, ‘Eksperimental’nyi knizhnyi auktsion’, KO, no. 27, 1987, p. 14.
G. Nekhoroshev, ‘Proigryvaiut vse’, KO, no. 37, 1987, p. 5. Booksellers were allowed to hold auctions for second-hand as well as strictly antiquarian books from 1 October 1987: see ‘Prikhodite na auktsion’, KO, no. 40, 1987, p. 2. For a later — positive — assessment of the auctions, see E. Komrat, ‘Po dogovornym tsenam’, KO, no. 33, 1988, p. 2.
O. Lasunskii, ‘O staroi knige i ee poklonnikakh’, KO, no. 3, 1990, p. 14.
On the history of the Soviet unofficial book trade, see M. Belgorodskii, ‘Razmyshleniia chitatelia o knizhnom defitsite’, KO, no. 46, 1988, p. 5. Shvedov found in his survey of 1988 that, while bookshops remained the most common source of books, 19 per cent of readers obtained books through the organization where they worked. A further 11 per cent had recourse to the black market (see Kniga v sovremennom obshchestve, p. 52).
See A. Khoroshev, ‘Detektivy... Detektivy’, KO, no. 18, 1988. For more on the channels through which books reached the black market, see ‘Golos knizhnykh “zhuchkov”’, KO, no. 21, 1989, p. 6.
See A. Khoroshev, ‘Torgovlia s ruk: spekuliant i tolkuchka’, KO, no. 1, 1989, p. 10.
Note A. Petrovskii, ‘Svetlye mysli o chernom rynke’, KO, no. 48, 1987, p. 4; and the letters page in KO, no. 38, 1987, p. 5, where readers were invited to ponder the questions ‘Is it necessary to buy up books just in case [zakupaf knigi vprok]? Are black marketeers the benefactors or the enemies of book-lovers? How are we to achieve an abundance of books?’
See the reader’s letter in KO, no. 8, 1986, p. 10, and the following subsequent articles: ‘Kogda ischeznet “nagruzka”?’, KO, no. 15, 1986, p. 14; ‘Chto pokazal reid’, KO, no. 26, 1986, p. 10; V. Ogryzko, ‘Tochku stavit’ rano’, KO, no. 41, 1986, p. 14.
The practice of nagruzka was mentioned by Maurice Friedberg’s Odessan informants in his How Things Were Done in Odessa: Cultural and Intellectual Pursuits in a Soviet City, Boulder, Col., 1991, pp. 115–17. It was also reported sporadically in the Soviet press of the 1970s: see, for example, V. Aleksandrov, ‘Nu kak, organizuem’, Krokodil, no. 11, 1973, p. 12. This article is accompanied by a cartoon where a clearly offended author sees that a tin of instant coffee has been attached with a bright pink ribbon to a copy of his book. As the bookseller explains to him: ‘Otherwise your book would be, in the first instance, unsellable, and in the second, unreadable.’
T. Zhuchkova, ‘Tirazhi i spros: Mnenie spetsialista’, KO, no. 9, 1990, p. 6.
See, for example, L. Vladimirova, ‘Tysiacha i odna noch’ zakazooborota’, KO, no. 5, 1986, p. 5; ‘Ot pozhelanii — k delu’, KO, no. 12, 1986, p. 4; ‘“Da” i “net” ne govorite... “Kniga — pochtoi” i ee snabzhenie literaturoi’, KO, no. 23, 1986; N. Dukina, ‘U menia, u kioskera, nabolelo’, KO, no. 19–22, 1988.
See KO, no. 28, 1987, p. 14.
Nenashev has published an account of his time at Goskomizdat, as well as of his earlier career: see M. Nenashev, An Ideal Betrayed: Testimonies of a Prominent and Loyal Member of the Soviet Establishment, London, 1995. Typical of the many interviews Nenashev gave in the late 1980s is ‘Kak reshaetsia problema knizhnogo defitsita’, Argumenty i fakty, no. 16, 1988, p. 2.
For other measures taken to encourage editorial initiative and democratization in the publishing houses, note the Goskomizdat resolutions ‘O merakh po povysheniiu roli redaktora v redaktsionno-izdatel’skom protsesse’ (21 January 1988) and ‘O tipovom polozhenii o redaktsionnom sovete izdatel’stva’ (21 July 1988), both in Razvitie demokratizatsii v knigoizdanii. Some observers objected that editors were operating in much the same way as before; for a summary of these complaints, see M. Remizova, ‘Norma ili iskliuchenie? Razmyshlenie o redaktore’, KO, no. 1, 1989.
See Nenashev, An Ideal Betrayed, pp. 65–78.
Namely, a three-volume edition of Pushkin in 1986 with a print-run of 10 070 000 copies; a 1987 Maiakovskii collection in 6 million copies; and 14 million copies of a two-volume edition of Lermontov in 1988. All these editions were open to unlimited subscription. In 1988–9 some smaller publishing houses put out two-volume editions of Pushkin, whereupon in transpired that demand for Russian classics was not a bottomless pit and that even Russia’s national poet could be transformed into nagruzka: see the reader’s letter in KO, no. 7, 1989, p. 5.
I. Korovkin in ‘V interesakh chitatelei’, KO, no. 2, 1987, p. 3.
See, for example, M. Nenashev in KO, no. 44, 1987, p. 2; and A. Seregin, ‘Nekotorye mysli po povodu izdatel’skikh kooperativov’, S. Khanzhin (ed.), Kniga. Obshchestvo. Perestroika, Moscow, 1990.
These problems are discussed in the round-table ‘Chto izdavat’? Skol’ko izdavat’? Ot chego otkazat’sia?’, KO, no. 27, 1987.
See A. Chernyshova and V. Kossov, ‘Chto nuzhno pokupateliu? (Assortimentnyi obzor neudovletvorennogo sprosa)’, Knizhnaia torgovlia, vol. 20, 1988. Soiuzkniga had for many years carried out an annual inventory of titles published in the previous three years that remained unsold in the book trade network: see M. Arbuzov, Knizhnaia torgovlia v SSSR, Moscow, 1976, p. 66.
The Institute of the Book may be considered only a very qualified success. It suffered from difficult working conditions and limited independence from its masters in the state publishing system. See the assessment made by the Director, A. Solov’ev, in ‘Institut knigi i “narkomaniia” chteniia’, KO, no. 10, 1989, p. 7. For a later report on the institute’s activities, see A. Solov’ev, ‘Pliuralizm sovremennoi knizhnoi kul’tury: analiz chitatel’skikh interesov, puti udovletvoreniia potrebnostei v knige’, KIM, vol. 60, 1990.
See, for example, ‘Perestroika v otrasli: trudnye shagi’, KO, no. 31, 1987, p. 2.
He received 10 000 suggestions: see ‘Roman-gazeta — chitateliam’, KO, no. 33, 1986, p. 7.
See the interview with Ganichev, ‘Mozhet li byt’ obshchedostupnoi Roman-gazeta’, V mire knig, no. 10, 1989.
See KO, no. 28, 1988, p. 5.
See the letters in KO, no. 40, 1989, pp. 3–4; and the commentaries in KO, no. 50, 1989, p. 5 and no. 12, 1990, p. 4.
For more detail on the questionnaire results, see S. Shvedov, ‘Istoriia odnoi ankety’, LO, no. 3, 1988, pp. 87–90. For more on the importance of the ‘best books’ format in ‘valorizing the literary’, see N. N. Feltes, Literary Capital and the Late Victorian Novel, Madison, Wise, 1993, esp. ch. 2.
The conditioned mindset of the Soviet consumer was epitomized strikingly in a reader’s letter of 1990: ‘What could be simpler — to saturate the market with a single book that would be interesting for everyone’ (KO, no. 3, 1990, p. 5). The black market in books (and attendant defltsit) still existed as late as March 1991: see V. Kats, ‘Knizhnye korobeiniki i statistika’, KO, no. 24, 1991.
The postbag resulting from this list is analyzed by Neia Zorkaia in ‘Reverans vpolvorota. Kak po “primernomu spisku” sudit’ o real’nom sprose?’, V mire knig, no. 3, 1988.
Shvedov found in his survey that fewer than 2 per cent of readers were in favour of general price increases for books: see Kniga v sovremennom obshch-estve, p. 53.
See O. Latsis, ‘Tsena ravnovesiia’, Znamia, no. 2, 1988. It is interesting that the book trade tended to be in the vanguard of Soviet experiments in economic liberalization. For example, book sales were boosted in Saratov in the mid-1960s using an experiment in self-management: see P. Iachmenev, Knizhnaia khozraschetnaia firma: peredovoi opyt v potrebitel’skoi kooperatsii Saratovskoi oblasti, Saratov, 1967.
Note, in particular, M. Nenashev, ‘Put’ k chitateliu — khozraschet i demokra-tizatsiia’, V mire knig, no. 5, 1989.
On the anomalies of the pricing system in publishing, see P. Karp, ‘Chto pochem?’, KO, no. 14, 1988, pp. 2–3; and
I. Stoliarov, ‘Knigi i tseny’, KO, no. 29, 1988, p. 2.
For a good overview of the price reforms, see V. Solonenko, ‘K tsene ravnovesiia: kak my shli k svobodnym tsenam’, KD, no. 2, 1992.
See A. Govorov, T. Sokratova and N. Chulanova, ‘Otkuda berutsia i kuda vozvrashchaiutsia den’gi. O bukinisticheskoi torgovle, “chernom rynke” i dogovornykh tsenakh’, KO, no. 20, 1989, p. 4.
See the interview with E. Kucherova, ‘Tseny tronulis’, KO, no. 4, 1991, p. 5.
In September 1996 the school year began, as is now customary, with a des-perate shortage of teaching materials. Of course, there is no lack of textbooks published commercially, but, while they have a substantial market, they are not affordable for large sections of the population. The state has capped pricing on certain types of textbook, but it is unable to provide the necessary subsidies. The debate on state support for socially important areas of publishing has been carried on throughout the 1990s. For reflections on the inadequacy of state policy in this area, see S. Kondratov, ‘Komu nuzhny “nemetskie” uchebniki?’, KO, no. 39, 1993.
Note that the number of titles published in the Soviet Union fell between 1978 and 1988 for this very reason: publishers knew that the system would take anything they produced, and so tended not to expend resources on small editions. See Iu. Gorshkov, ‘Budushchnost’ kooperativnykh izdatel’stv: logika nastoiashchego plius opyt proshlogo’, KIM, vol. 61, 1990.
See B. Kats, ‘Knizhnye korobeiniki i statistika’, KO, no. 24, 1991.
See the Goskomizdat resolution ‘O vypuske proizvedenii za sehet sredstv avtora’, KO, no. 10, 1989.
There were, for example, 262 in the second quarter of 1991: see KO, no. 28, 1991, p. 1.
See the quarterly publishing statistics that appeared in KO: these give the exact number of new’ small state enterprises’, ‘publishing organizations’, joint ventures and fully-fledged private publishing houses (KO, no. 28, 1991; no. 2, 1992; no. 14, 1992).
See Iu. Sapozhnikov and N. Timofeeva, ‘Chto izdaetsia i ne prodaetsia, i naoborot’, KO, no. 12, 1992, p. 8.
For signs of a new, business-orientated approach to publishing, see the specialist journals Izdatel’-kommersant (St Petersburg) and Knizhnoe delo (Moscow), both of which were set up in 1992; they were later followed by Knizhnyi biznes (Moscow).
For more detail on the publishing world of 1991–2, see D. Lowe, ‘The Book Business in Postcommunist Russia: Moscow, Year One (1992)’, Harriman Institute Forum, vol. 6, no. 5, 1993, esp. pp. 2–4.
Combined print-run fell from 1.76 billion to 1.63 billion in 1988, and 1.31 billion in 1992; the number of titles fell from 46 023 in 1989 to 34 050 in 1991, and 28 716 in 1992 (figures taken from Sem’ia v Rossiiskoi Federatsii, Moscow, 1994, p. 392).
See V. Eremenko, ‘Knige ugrozhaet... rynok’, KO, no. 41, 1990, (this article describes the Founding Conference of book distributors) and ‘Rynok dlia kul’tury — ne blago’, KO, no. 42, 1990, (an interview with M. Shishigin, the President of the Association of Book-Publishers (ASKI), on the need for state protectionism). ASKI was founded in 1990; its constitution was published in Knigoizdanie v SSSR: Spravochnik knizhnykh izdatel’stv, izdaiushchikh organizat-sii i predpriiatii, Moscow, 1991.
See, for example, O. Proskurin, ‘“Sovetskii pisatel’” kak zerkalo sovetskoi literatury. Zametki na poliakh tematicheskogo plana’, NG, 10 January 1992.
See KO, no. 10, 1992.
More detail on this sea-change in the book market is to be found in N. Condee and V. Padunov, ‘Perestroika Suicide: Not By Bred Alone’, Russian Culture in Transition: Selected Papers of the Working Group for the Study of Contemporary Russian Culture, 1990–1991, Stanford Slavic Studies, vol. 7, 1993, esp. pp. 95–111. The same authors updated their account in ‘Proigrannyi rai. Ruletka sotsializma. Rynochnyi determinizm i postmodernizm po obiazatel’noi programme’, in N. Azhgikhina (ed.), Novaia volna: Russkaia kuVtura i subkuVtury na rubezhe 80–90-kh godov, Moscow, 1994; and ‘The ABC of Russian Consumer Culture. Readings, Ratings, and Real Estate’, in N. Condee (ed.), Soviet Hieroglyphics: Visual Culture in Late Twentieth-Century Russia, Bloomington, Ind. and London, 1995.
Quite apart from years of state neglect, libraries were hit particularly hard by khozraschet and the following stages of liberalization: see E. Ponomareva, ‘Na trudnom puti peremen’, Bibliotekar’, no. 1, 1990.
See V. Stel’makh, ‘Na kakom fundamente stroit’? Vzgliad sotsiologa na stereotipy bibliotechnoi ideologii’, Bibliotekar’, no. 7, 1990.
See V. Stel’makh, ‘Biblioteka — khram ili masterskaia?’, in V. Stel’makh (ed.), Biblioteka i chtenie: problemy i issledovaniia, St Petersburg, 1995.
For more detail on these questions, see L. Gudkov, B. Dubin and A. Reitblat, ‘Preobrazovanie — ne usovershenstvovanie’, Bibliotekar’, no. 8, 1990.
B. Dubin, ‘Esli net deneg — daite svobodu’, Bibliotekar’, no. 10, 1990, p. 7. A striking comparison can be made with 1940, when only 38 per cent of holdings were of the ‘mass’ type (the proportion of technical literature was then much greater).
S. Shvedov, Kniga v sovremennom obshchestve, unpublished referai, Moscow, 1988, section 2.11, appendix.
See V. Chudinova, ‘Domashniaia biblioteka i iunyi chitatel’ 1980-kh gg.’, in N. Efimova (ed.), Chto my chitaem? Kakie my?, St Petersburg, 1993.
L. Gudkov and B. Dubin, Literatura kak sotsial’nyi institut, Moscow, 1994, p. 265.
This analysis of the composition of book collections was carried out as part of the research project Kniga v sovremennom obshchestve: see section 2.11, appendix.
One of the effects of the defttsit had been to blur the distinction between readers with secondary and higher education: the threshold of cultural sophistication was located somewhere within the higher education group and separated the cultural elite from the mass intelligentsia (see the earlier remarks on this group in the first section of the chapter).
See the articles by M. Smorodinskaia in Analiz-prognoz, no. 2, 1990, esp. pp. 13–14, 16, 22.
A. Reitblat, ‘Biblioteka “dlia sebia” i biblioteka “dlia vsekh”: skhodstva i razlichiia’, in N. Efimova (ed.), Chto my chitaem? Kakie my?, St Petersburg, 1993, p. 50.
See Iu. Levada (ed.), Est’ mneniel, Moscow, 1990, pp. 131–2.
P. Rozhkov, ‘Po abonementam za sdannuiu makulaturu’, KO, no. 2, 1991, p. 14. The works selected for 1991 offered a typical mix of foreign and Soviet classics (Lewis Carroll, Kipling, Babel’) along with more recent favourites (Margaret Mitchell, Agatha Christie, Serge and Anne Golon, Dale Carnegie). Even as late as the second half of 1992, some readers were reluctant to accept that the makulatura series was doomed: see T. Blazhnova, ‘Nasha dama bita. Poluchite li vy “makulaturnye” knigi’, KO, no. 36, 1992, p. 4.
See ‘Kul’tura na sotsial’nom perelome’, 1992. I am grateful to Boris Dubin for making available to me these unpublished findings of the VTsIOM research programme ‘Kul’tura’. Note also the list of the ‘100 best books’ for 1990, published in KO, no. 23, 1991, which is dominated by Dumas, Pikul’ and other long-standing favourites of the Soviet reading public.
For more on the cultural context of Bulgakov’s reception in post-Stalin Russia, see S. Lovell, ‘Bulgakov as Soviet Culture’, Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 76, no. 1, 1998.
See V. Ialysheva, ‘Chitatel’skie interesy v rossiiskoi provintsii: Belgorod’, in Efimova (ed.), Chto my chitaem?.
G. Iakimov, ‘Chitatel’skoe povedenie vremen “perestroika”’, in V. Stel’makh (ed.), Biblioteka i chtenie: problemy i issledovaniia, St Petersburg, 1995, p. 104.
For a postitive assessment of Pikul’s role as a great popularizer, see N. Khrenov, ‘Pravo na zhanr’, KO, no. 11, 1986, p. 9. V. Oskotskii (the author of more than one scholarly work on Soviet historical fiction) was hostile in’ stalinizm i natsional’nyi vopros, ili “Solenoe slovtso” Valentina Pikulia’, KO, no. 23, 1989. Note also the interview with Pikul’ in Nash sovremennik, no. 2, 1989.
The over-ideologized Soviet detektiv could not really hope to compete, even though attempts were made to boost it by publishing a thirty-volume series of the classics of the genre: see ‘Vnimanie: “Sovetskii defektiv”!’, KO, no. 38, 1989, p. 6; and ‘Net — detektivu?’, KO, no. 48, 1989, p. 3. Soviet exponents of the genre formed their own ‘creative union’, whose president, A. Bezuglov, was interviewed in KO, no. 28, 1991, p. 3.
Readers regularly wrote in to Knizhnoe obozrenie to give vent to their frustrations. These letters were subjected to sociological analysis in “Illiuzii i deistvitel’nost’”, LO, no. 6, 1988, pp. 87–93.
See Iakimov, ‘Chitatel’skoe povedenie’, p. 110.
Several such examples are noted by Andrei Nemzer in ‘Ob izdatel’skikh delakh: Pis’mo neizvestnomu adresatu’, NG, 10 October 1992. For evidence of readers’ predilection for the multi-volume edition, see M. Smorodinskaia, ‘Zhelaemoe i real’noe priobretenie literatury dlia semeinykh sobranii v 1985–1986 gg’, Analiz-prognoz, no. 2, 1990.
The unsatisfied demand for material other than belletristika in many regions of the Soviet Union is one of the main ‘problems’ identified in Sovremennoe sovetskoe knigoizdanie: Opyt, problemy, Moscow, 1985.
For details of the programme for publication of reference literature and encyclopedias in 1989–90, see KO, no. 4, 1988, pp. 8–9. Several of the Goskomizdat resolutions concerning these programmes are listed in Razvitie demokratizatsii v knigoizdanii.
See the Goskomizdat resolution published in KO, no. 36, 1987, 2.
It was, for example, in 1990 that sex manuals were first advertised and reviewed approvingly in the central press: see the review of Seksual’naia udovletvorennost’ muzhchin (Moscow: Meditsina), no. 18, 1990, p. 9. Note also the review of V. Shakhdzhanian’s 1001 vopros pro eto in KO, no. 11, 1992, p. 3.
See, for example, E. Averin, ‘My’, KO, no. 11, 1991, p. 3.
See E. Bakhanov, ‘Chto budem chitat’?’, KO, no. 2, 1991, p. 2.
For details of the English ‘consumer revolution’, see N. McKendrick, J. Brewer and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England, Bloomington, Ind., 1982.
See, for example, P. Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, Cambridge, 1993, esp. diagram on p. 38.
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Lovell, S. (2000). Reading Revitalized? The Perestroika Project and its Aftermath. In: The Russian Reading Revolution. Studies in Russia and East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230596450_4
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