Samizdat. Attempts to comprehend

Author and Presenter Vladimir Tolts

Samizdat. Attempts to comprehend

Vladimir Tolts:

The Yandex search engine finds more than 88 thousand mentions of the word “Samizdat” on the Russian Internet. And yet not a single definition of what it is.

- The most important thing is that people did what they wanted. They turned the abstract word "independence" into reality.

- When I was imprisoned, hundreds of people were already closely following my arrest, mine and my friends. And if about 70 people stood up for Sinyavsky and Daniel, then there are already more than two thousand for us. These are the first steps of what later became called samizdat.

- In Italy, people, even those close to terrorist circles, systematically read The Gulag Archipelago. Ironically, this book changed their minds and put an end to extreme movements.

Vladimir Tolts:

The history of Samizdat has attracted me for a long time. One of the reasons for this interest is the role it played in the lives of several post-war generations of Soviet people. And in my own too. And if with the latter everything was more or less clear to me: the knowledge of much of what I now rely on in my life and professional activities, I owe to what I read from the mid-60s in “blind” typewritten printouts on bad paper, to what I saw at prohibited exhibitions, to what I heard at illegal concerts and in bad tape recordings, and to my fate (in particular, forced emigration) own modest participation in Samizdat, the significance of Samizdat as a cultural phenomenon in the life of the USSR in the 1960s-80s, its role in the collapse of Soviet and Eastern European communism remained (and I admit, still partly remains) insufficiently clear and clarified for me.

On the one hand, I have long understood that a phenomenon whose Russian name has entered untranslated into other languages ​​and in them denotes not only something specifically Soviet, Russian, has by no means a local meaning. How many such examples do we know? - “Collective farm”, “pogrom”, “dacha”, “Gulag”, “KGB”, “Sputnik”, “perestroika”, finally... Behind each of these words is something that in one way or another influenced the destinies of not only Russia and Russians.

On the other hand, I was embarrassed by the initial and, as it seemed to me, subsequent social limitations of the samizdat audience, the smallness of its circulation (in comparison, for example, with state publishing), as well as the excessive, as it again seemed, neophyte enthusiasm of those who, with the advent of Gorbachev’s “glasnost”, belatedly discovered for themselves what we, the old readers and publishers of Samizdat, were familiar with from a young age - the forbidden Akhmatov and Mandelstam, Solzhenitsyn's "Archipelago", unknown to them Platonov, Zamyatin, Nabokov, Orwell, Shalamov, the memoirs of Evgenia Ginzburg, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Vladimir Bukovsky, Pyotr Grigorenko, the writings of party comrades - Lenin, Bukharin, Trotsky - hidden from them... (The list of names and topics can fill all the remaining minutes programs.) This excessive enthusiasm of the late 80s can be understood: people were discovering a whole universe of a culture unknown to them, a country unknown to them, in which, it turned out, they lived. And those who had partly come into contact with it earlier, for the first time had the opportunity to speak openly about what they already knew. But still, it seems to me, history cannot be perceived (let alone understood) in a superlative degree.

And besides, I was hampered by my poor knowledge of samizdat reality in Eastern Europe.

Probably, it was precisely because of this last circumstance that I was especially pleased to hear on German and Russian television the message about the exhibition at the Academy of Arts in Berlin "Samizdat. Alternative culture in Central and Eastern Europe. 1960-80." It must be said that samizdat (in particular, Soviet samizdat) has long been given serious attention in Germany. And scientists, and political observers, and journalists. Back in the early 1970s, van het Reve, Beuter, and Leber wrote about him in local publications. In 1976, in Frankfurt am Main, a book by long-time participant in Radio Liberty programs, Yuri Maltsev, “Free Russian Literature” was published in Russian. In the 1970s and 80s, Soviet samizdat was the subject of research by Professor Wolfgang Kazak. And of course, one cannot fail to mention the Samizdat Department, created at Radio Liberty in 1968 by an amazing American who devoted his life to collecting and studying Russian samizdat, Peter Dornan. His successor (now he is the director of the Russian Service of our Radio) Mario Corti recalls:

Mario Corti:

What was going on in this department? Well, in the beginning, literally all the documents that came in were reprinted, and a kind of critical apparatus was created. The documents were reprinted, everything was checked - quotes, geographical names, surnames. Each document was supplied with the necessary comments, often with a name index. Soon, however, there were a lot of documents and a selection had to be made. Although the publication, which was weekly, “Materials of Samizdat,” was quite voluminous, sometimes from 30-50 to a hundred pages, it was not possible to reprint all the documents. Documents that did not make it into the publication were deposited in the Samizdat Archive, which is why this department is known in the world as the Samizdat Archive. And when these documents were useful, then they (well, for example, someone was arrested, tried, a recording came in, a transcript of the process and there were documents related to this case), they were then reprinted.

This department was closed at a time when samizdat was no longer received. The process began around 1986, and the department was closed in 1990 or 1991. When the radio station moved to Prague, all research departments, including the Samizdat Department, were transferred to the Central European University in Budapest. All materials from this department are now stored there.

Vladimir Tolts:

In recent years, the center for the study of Samizdat in Germany has become the Research Institute for Eastern Europe at the University of Bremen, where the now old Moscow samizdator, long-time employee of the now defunct Munich Samizdat Archive Gabriel Superfin, works, and the director is the famous German Slavist Wolfgang Eichwede. Both of them made fundamental contributions to the Berlin exhibition I mentioned. And if my old friend Superfin’s interest in samizdat is quite clear to me - Garik went to prison for it - then the roots of Professor Aichvede’s samizdat hobby were unclear to me. When we met, he himself told me about it this way.

Wolfgang Eichwede:

I think that even during my childhood in 1956 (I was 14 years old then), I don’t know exactly why, but the events in Hungary and Poland became so important for me that I, then a child, organized an evening of solidarity with Hungary, for example.

And then Russian literature played a big role in my life, even during childhood. This is, of course, Pasternak’s question. When I read Doctor Zhivago in 1959, I said: if I have a daughter, she will be named Lara. (And indeed, this later became so.)

A little later, in 1968, I met with historians from Czechoslovakia, with people who lived in Russia, in the Soviet Union, during the war; they were forced to emigrate from Prague. Then they came back and had high hopes for Dubcek. For the first time, I discussed with them how we can preserve these traditions. And then during the 1960s I met certain people in the Soviet Union, Gefter, Gnedin, others, then Kopelev. At the end of the 70s it was Jiri Pelikan, a great journalist from Czechoslovakia. And he proposed to our former chancellor Willy Brandt to create an archive of samizdat publications. And I included his proposal in my university. And so we created this archive and found the means and opportunities to create the Institute of Eastern Europe, which deals with these issues.

Vladimir Tolts:

But I still managed to attend the exhibition at the Berlin Academy of Arts. And I even had a chance to be present during the discussion of the “phenomenon of samizdat” by its former participants, and now researchers from Hungary, the former GDR, the former Czechoslovakia, the former, again, the Soviet Union, as well as Poland. What I heard there gives me some opportunity to look at samizdat differently than before. And I would like to share what I heard with you today.

Probably the most honorable participant in the discussion on samizdat at the Berlin Academy of Arts, in which I had the opportunity to participate, was the prominent Soviet dissident and political prisoner Alexander Ilyich Ginzburg, who now lives in Paris. The chairman, Professor Aichwede, introduced him to the audience as the “father of samizdat.” (“Probably already a grandfather,” Alexander Ilyich corrected him.)

Ginzburg's story about himself was for listeners a living history of samizdat.

Alexander Ginzburg:

As a young journalist, I can say I was lucky. I worked in a newspaper that is still famous today, probably even more so, in the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets. I was one of the few journalists of this newspaper who was almost never touched by the editor's hand. - I wrote a lot about ballet and, fortunately for me, none of my editors had seen a single ballet. So from that side I felt kind of good.

But I grew up in quite an interesting and quite difficult time. Let's start it at least from the year 56, the beginning of my work in journalism. The year 56 is several very significant events at once. This is not only the 20th Congress of the Communist Party, it is, finally, a phenomenon that is little talked about: this year people who were there under Stalin began to leave the camps. And the stories of these people, their experiences in the camps were the environment in which we grew up. And, naturally, each of us in our profession tried to be at least a mirror of this whole atmosphere.

Well, being a mirror on the pages of a newspaper was hard enough. And then the idea came, which my friends called crazy, to publish my own magazine without any censorship. Produce using improvised means, that is, on typewriters. This is the only duplicating machine that we had in our hands.

I put aside the second question that was raised at the time - they will imprison you, they will not imprison you - at that time we didn’t even think about it, but what to print. And at some point I realized that neither journalistic delights nor the philosophy familiar to us are yet suitable for understanding today; a much more subtle and precise mechanism is needed. And poetry was such a mechanism at that time. And so the magazine, which we called "Syntax", each issue consisted of poems by ten poets.

Two numbers were made from poems by Moscow poets, one number from Leningrad. I must say that I was lucky, because Syntax managed to discover such names as Bulat Okudzhava, Joseph Brodsky, Genrikh Sapgir, Bella Akhmadulina. Of the thirty poets who managed to stay at Syntax, at least twenty became very, very noticeable phenomena in Russian poetry. In general, an issue was published every two months; this was the late 50s and early 60s.

In the end, the native authorities, who don’t like it when people do things that no one allowed them to do, got fed up, and they imprisoned me. For the first time in such a strange job, I got my first two years of camp.

Vladimir Tolts:

Alexander Ginzburg arrived at the camp on April 12, 1961 - the very day Yuri Gagarin flew into space. Alexander Ilyich told me that, not knowing anything about the “Soviet space breakthrough,” he could not at first understand why both the prisoners and the prisoners were so rejoicing, was it really about his arrival?..

Alexander Ginzburg:

I served two years, came out and saw that my arrest did not scare anyone. Several more appeared, up to a dozen different samizdat magazines. The word “samizdat” itself appeared, which did not yet exist in “Synaxis” times, there was only “Publish yourself,” as the wonderful poet, also a member of “Syntax,” Nikolai Glazkov signed his books. I realized that everything had already moved in this direction and that they could do without me.

I was lucky to get to the exhibition in the Manege, which was visited by Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev. It was such a scandalous visit. I looked at it all, came home and did such a pretty big report about it. There was no suitable newspaper for him, so with the help of friends the report went to the West and was published there.

And then one more thing happened - disaster happened. (Unfortunately, our successes very often began with some kind of misfortune.) They imprisoned two of our friends, they imprisoned them because they actually went much further than Syntax. They decided that there were readers not only in the Soviet Union, and what they wrote under pseudonyms, under the pseudonyms Abram Terts and Nikolai Arzhak , they sent to Paris and in the Polish publishing house "Kultura" it was published in Polish, in Russian, in French. They were imprisoned for this.

Then I came across letters that their friends wrote in their defense. Then there was a trial, after which it was possible to completely restore the transcript of this trial. Then there were materials from Soviet newspapers about this trial. I compiled this whole case and it turned out to be a very interesting read, which became known as “The White Book on the Case of Sinyavsky and Daniel.” And I did something unique with this book.

I took one of the typed copies, one out of ten, to the KGB with my own hands. He took it and said: you imprisoned the writers, but I made a book. In my opinion, you should release them, otherwise I will have to print this book. Well, they scared me, they scared me and let me go, they put me under surveillance, but I left... I started walking around with this book among the deputies of the Supreme Council, in general I did what I could, and in the end I got myself imprisoned. But the book actually went to the West and was published there.

Vladimir Tolts:

Of course, the trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel and the publication of the White Book by Ginzburg about their case had much broader consequences than the next arrest of Alexander Ilyich. This is what was reported on January 27, 1967 in a secret note from the KGB and the USSR Prosecutor's Office sent to the CPSU Central Committee:

“As reported earlier, starting in December 1965, there were repeated attempts in Moscow to organize various kinds of gatherings and provocative speeches, either in defense of Sinyavsky and Daniel, or in memory of the victims of Stalinism, or with demagogic demands for the revision of laws. Gatherings, as a rule, are preceded by the distribution of various kinds of politically harmful materials, including leaflets with demagogic demands.

The actions of the participants in the gatherings are not of a random nature, they are to a certain extent inspired and fueled by those who, in an atmosphere of increased political activity of the masses and measures taken by the party to strengthen and expand socialist democracy, hiding behind false slogans of the fight against the consequences of the cult of personality and for true democracy, took the path of demagoguery and, in essence, set out to discredit the democratic achievements of the Soviet system. These people include: Volpin, a researcher at the All-Union Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of the USSR Academy of Sciences; employee of the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences Yakir; worker of the Ginzburg Literary Museum and some others. As a result, a group of 35-40 people has emerged who carry out their politically harmful activities by producing and distributing anti-Soviet literature, as well as organizing various kinds of demonstrations and gatherings. Participants in these gatherings appeal to the Western press, which prints the materials they produce, trying to distribute them throughout the Soviet Union.

Taking into account what was stated by the USSR Prosecutor's Office and the State Security Committee, in order to suppress hostile activities for the production, distribution and transfer abroad of anti-Soviet literature, as well as for organizing and active participation in group actions that violate public order, the following were arrested and prosecuted: Ginzburg, born in 1936; workers of the Literary Museum Golanski, born in 1939 and Dobrovolsky, born in 1938; laboratory assistant at Moscow State University Lashkova, born in 1944; Technician at the Institute for Design of Non-Ferrous Metallurgy Enterprises Radzievsky, born in 1947; Kushev, born in 1947, no specific occupation, member of the Komsomol; driver Khaustov, born in 1938; Bukovsky, born in 1942 and Delaunay, born in 1947, both without specific occupations; and a teacher at Gabay Secondary School, born in 1935."

Vladimir Tolts:

It must be said that then, at the beginning of 1967, the Politburo had not yet formulated what to do with this rather new phenomenon - with samizdat. Therefore, it was decided to “remove the issue from consideration,” and to instruct the main ideologist of the party, Suslov, the head of the Party Control Commission Pelshe, and the chairman of the KGB, Semichastny, to “think through the issues /.../ and, if necessary, submit them to the Central Committee, including the responsibility of authors for transferring manuscripts for publication abroad.”

The KGB argued that the need to deal with Samizdat was ripe. In the summer of 1967, the new head of State Security reported to the Central Committee:

"Top secret.

The State Security Committee reports that, according to the data received, Candidate of Biological Sciences at the Institute of Medical Radiology Zhores Medvedev and his close acquaintance Valery Pavlinchuk, who live in the city of Obninsk, Kaluga Region, began to reproduce Solzhenitsyn’s unpublished novel “In the First Circle” on typewriters with the aim of distributing it among scientific workers in the city of Obninsk. For the same purpose, a researcher at the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Yakir Petr Ivanovich, who is known as a participant in a number of antisocial manifestations and making politically harmful statements, is planning his trip to Obninsk. Considering that Solzhenitsyn’s novel “In the First Circle” is a politically harmful work, if Yakir went to Obninsk and received copies of the novel, it would be considered necessary to detain Yakir and confiscate these manuscripts from him, and in relation to Medvedev, instruct the Obninsk city committee of the CPSU to take measures to suppress his antisocial activities.

Please consider it.

Chairman of the State Security Committee Andropov."

Suslov, who received this note, wrote “agree” and proposed it to the secretaries of the Central Committee for a vote. Pelshe and Kirilenko signed up for this.

But in the same “jubilee” summer of ’67 (the authorities were preparing to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution), something happened that they had no idea about. - The practice and tactics of Samizdat spread not only in breadth, but also penetrated to the top of the Soviet social pyramid, located in close proximity to the ruling elite. Even earlier, in 1963, Sinyavsky’s colleague at the Institute of World Literature, Stalin’s daughter Svetlana, secretly wrote her “20 letters to a friend” at a dacha near Moscow. Having escaped from the USSR, she published them (the book has already returned to her homeland - to samizdat). Now Svetlana Alliluyeva has prepared a second one for publication. (The KGB found out about this and was preparing “counter-propaganda.”) But Andropov did not know then that the publication of his memoirs in the West was also being secretly prepared at the dacha by the former head of the CPSU Khrushchev. When he was interrogated about this by the CCP in 1970, Nikita Sergeevich behaved like a real samizdator - he completely denied everything, and continued working on his memoirs...

In addition, the first Soviet experiments known to me in understanding the “phenomenon of samizdat” date back to 1970. They were, as usual, secret, and carried out by the KGB. Here is one of the results:

“An analysis of the so-called “samizdat literature” that is spreading in the circles of the intelligentsia and students shows that samizdat has undergone qualitative changes in recent years. If five years ago, mainly ideologically flawed works of art were being circulated, now documents of a programmatic and political nature are becoming increasingly widespread.

Over the period since 1965, over four hundred different studies and articles have appeared on economic, political and philosophical issues, in which the historical experience of socialist construction in the Soviet Union is criticized from different sides, the foreign and domestic policies of the CPSU are reviewed, and various types of opposition programs are put forward. Around the end of 1968 - beginning of 1969, a political core called

The main objectives of the movement, as formulated in issue 13

In Eastern and Central Europe, the history of “samizdat” developed differently. But its powerful incentive was the penetration of samizdat from the USSR there.

Here's what former Gedeerian samizdator Reinhard Weishun said about it:

“When we first became acquainted with samizdat, we were simply stunned. The effect was produced not even by reading, but simply by realizing that such publications, uncontrolled by the authorities and their distribution, are possible in the socialist camp. (We received “tamizdat” before, from Germany). But the Russian example showed that we can do it ourselves. For some, it also had a special meaning that “Erika,” which “takes 4 copies,” was produced in the GDR. They joked: "To "Big Brother" and here all the best..."

But the main thing is that we suddenly realized that power is not total!... Since the late 70s, everything has been published: songs by Wolf Biermann, Trotskyist texts, plays by Mrozhek, correspondence between Kuron and Modzalevsky. We began to look differently not only at the West, but also at the East. It is also important that the Church helped a lot..."

It wasn't just the church that helped. About 5 years ago I had the opportunity to hear a speech by another Gedeyer samizdator, Klaus Michael . He told how the Stasi not only intensively introduced its “unofficial employees” into samizdat, but even encouraged them to be more active on the unofficial literary scene, supplied them with exclusive information and provided financial support. All this was aimed at capturing key positions by “unofficial employees” of the GB, but it also had consequences unforeseen by it - the activities of the seksots created over the years in the cultural sphere (I quote) “a kind of special niche, a kind of free space protected by the authorities, which had dubious stability, although state security believed that its influence in this niche was completely guaranteed.”

In Hungary the picture is different. A samizdator there, a graduate of Moscow State University, writer and translator Gyorgy Dyalos told me.

György Dyalos:

The first text with the word “Samizdat” on the title page appeared in 1976. But earlier, of course, manuscripts circulated. And the samizdat movement in Hungary was quite political, because in literature there was, although there was no freedom, but some kind of semi-freedom, a little more liberal than in other countries. But, nevertheless, samizdat published poetry, plays, and foreign literature in our country.

Samizdat was freedom. Moreover, this was not the freedom that is guaranteed by any democratic state for its citizens, but it was internal, personal freedom. So it was not only fear of the consequences, and not only conspiracy, but it was joy. We were just glad - this generation that was engaged in samizdat in Hungary - we were just glad that we could say what we think and that anyway there was no more censorship. We were not afraid of censorship, but of self-censorship.

But we weren’t taken very seriously at first. Because not only the authorities, who took us quite seriously, they often reported on us, but it can be said that the Hungarian society of the 1970s - early 80s was not prepared for open protest against the dictatorship. And so we seemed like a small sect that pursues not very clear interests.

Then, in the early 80s, when publications became more frequent, we received a special wonderful cartoonist in the person of Free Europe , this was a Munich program that the Hungarian population called “Budapest-3” , this was heard not only in opposition circles, but tens of thousands of people heard it and this was additional information. And in this way we participated in this information.

Vladimir Tolts:

Discussing with me the question of comparing the history of samizdat in the USSR and Eastern Europe, one of the organizers of the Berlin exhibition and discussion, Professor Wolfgang Eichwede, says:

Wolfgang Eichwede:

It seems to me that we are just beginning to explore these samizdat cultures. But in terms of approach, it seems to me that in the Soviet Union, in the former Soviet Union, samizdat culture was primarily a matter of individuals. There was Solzhenitsyn, there were other writers, very, very small groups, and they risked everything. And they did a lot. While in Czechoslovakia, for example, there are, of course, also great personalities, and you know the names of all the writers, but still in Czechoslovakia they have already created their own structures, they have already tried to create an institute of samizdat culture. In Poland this is the work of individuals, but, on the other hand, it was already a social movement...

Vladimir Tolts:

The long-time author of “Politics,” Germanist professor Adam Krzeminski, spoke to me in Berlin about Polish samizdat and its influence on the country’s culture.

Adam Krzeminski:

Poland was something of an emergency. At least in big cities, among the intelligentsia, samizdat - magazines and books - were very popular. This began in the mid or late 70s, and by the time the “martial law” was introduced, it was considered “good form” to read these and only these publications (and no official magazines or books!).

The result is stunning: the older generation - the producers of samizdat - knew where they stood out from, where they were coming from. They knew official literature and culture and wanted to complement them, to fill in the so-called “blank spots” of history.

Well, the younger generation, on the contrary, read only underground literature (I have two daughters, I know how this happened in their example!)... The result is impressive: we can say that they were blind in one eye! History seems to them to consist only of such events as the Stalin-Hitler Pact, Katyn - of everything that was not in official textbooks.

... In short, some of the people of the younger generation turned out to be half-educated, since they are familiar only with pieces of the post-war culture of Poland (after all, they did not want to read anything “official”)

This also has serious political consequences today. After all, part of the electorate is spiritually poor people! For example, the heated debate in Poland around the name of Wajda, an Oscar winner, demonstrates this well: suddenly a certain young man blathers: “but he was some kind of communist and made censored films - official sagas!...”

Adam Michnik was very angry then and simply reacted: “Fools!...”

Vladimir Tolts:

- Tell me, what significance did Soviet samizdat have for Poland?

Adam Krzeminski:

- Very important. Then it was a sign for us: there is another Russia , and this is not propaganda.

This other Russia , a country not of Cossack patrols and tank formations, but a country of morality, turned out to be Russian dissidents for us. This Russia was attractive to us. We then followed their destinies with great attention, realizing that these people often risked much more in their country than we did...

People of the younger generation also felt something similar - a spiritual kinship with such Russia. Let me give you an example. During the period of "martial law" I played a recording of Wolf Biermann's 1976 concert in Cologne for my German studies students, as well as recordings of Vysotsky and Galich. And everyone gave their preference to these Russians (let’s add Okudzhava to them). They also understood German well. But Russian turned out to be closer to them.
...And they all understood perfectly then: this is a wonderful language, wonderful literature, a wonderful country. It’s just that the principle of the state structure there is fatal!...

Vladimir Tolts:

Wolfgang Eichwede is right: the meaning of the “samizdat phenomenon” remains to be studied. In Prague, Mario Corti told me the same thing.

Mario Corti:

Samizdat, firstly, has given a lot to journalists in the West and historians who study modern history. That is, it was the only unofficial source of information in the West. Not only regarding current events, but, as you know, samizdat also included materials about the past, for example, some uprisings, some strikes in the 50s. For example, we learned about this through samizdat already in the 60-70s.

Samizdat, of course, is a more or less vague concept in the sense of what samizdat is. At first it was samizdat, which sometimes turned into “tamizdat”. He received wide publicity. The fact is that we still know little about the spread of samizdat, that is, how much it spread, in what circles, wide or narrow, it spread. But Radio Liberty helped here, because these documents were broadcast, and thus samizdat received wide distribution.

Fundamental changes have occurred in the West in connection with the reading of The Gulag Archipelago. In leftist circles in France and Italy. France and Italy were experiencing great changes. The fact is that “The Gulag Archipelago” was read in circles of left-wing radicals, young ones, both in Italy and in France. In France this gave rise to the phenomenon of new philosophers who used to be very left-wing and very radical. In Italy, “The Gulag Archipelago” was systematically read by people even close to terrorist circles. Ironically, this book changed their minds and put an end to these extreme movements.

Vladimir Tolts:

Well, samizdat is now a thing of the past. History in its purest form. Now we can study it for a long time and draw conclusions. However, the “grandfather of samizdat” Alexander Ginzburg does not completely agree with me.

Alexander Ginzburg:

As for summing up the results, it seemed to me that the results were summed up at least ten years ago, and since then no new samizdat has appeared. And, probably, what is happening now in the country is, as it were, pushing this Berlin exhibition of Eastern European samizdat to the forefront. What the hell, maybe this will also come in handy.