Zhili-byli-- : russkaia obriadovaia poeziia

Release Date: 1998

Edition: Unknown Binding

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Unusually informative and interesting

I know no book that presents a more complete and nuanced picture of Soviet literary life in the post-Stalin years. As well as being an excellent reference book -- I would not dream of writing anything about any of these 10 writers without consulting it -- it is also extremely interesting and entertaining. Soviet culture, I now realize, was far more complicated and contradictory than I had imagined. The best Soviet literary journals were real centres of cultural life (far more than any Western equivalents); they nurtured good writers even when it was politically impossible to publish them. When Petrushevskaya first sent her stories to the journal NOVY MIR in 1969, the editor decreed: "Withold publication, but don't lose track of the author". For the next 20 years the journal did just that. In Petrushevskaya's own words, "NOVY MIR fed me, gave me work, all through the most difficult and hungry times they gave me reviews and book reports to do. They couldn't publish me but they fed me and read me and gave me their opinion -- always." Through NOVY MIR Petrushevskaya was also able to make contact with other banned writers.

In a similar way, a story by Makanin made me rethink my understanding of the monolithic nature of the Stalinist legal system. In the forties, Makanin's father was arrested on a trumped-up charge. In the normal course of events he would have spent ten years in prison. "But it happened that I had an uncle who was a Civil War hero, a partisan, an old, lame man with a wooden leg. He had a pistol at home that he'd been allowed to keep, and he took this pistol and went straight to the procurator and said, 'Release him, otherwise I'll shoot you.' 'How can I?' 'That's your business.' (...) 'Go on, release him,' my uncle said. 'He's got chidren to feed, they need him. I've got nothing to lose,' he said. 'I'm a Civil War hero and they won't touch me, but I'll definitely shoot you if you don't do what I say.' The father's sentence was changed, and he was released!