Galina Zykova. "Anyone can become a censor"

"Anyone can become a censor"
Interview with Sergei Mikhailovich Alexandrov, editor of the biobibliographic dictionary "Russian Writers: 1800-1917"

Galina Zykova

Publication date: March 20, 2001

Galina Zykova: Sergei Mikhailovich, the position of the editor of Russian Writers is a unique “observation point”. Firstly, you have been working with a huge and diverse dictionary for many years, with dozens of philologists of different generations. Secondly, the project of the Dictionary itself is unique, almost utopian: to describe all the literature of the 19th century, to remember, as far as possible, everyone; such a project poses new challenges for philology. So how do you—from your particular vantage point—assess the state of the humanities? The first volume of the Dictionary was published in 1989 - what has changed during this time? And why do the editors of the Dictionary today have the feeling that the project is fading away - the old authors are leaving?

Sergey Alexandrov: To tell the truth, I am more concerned with the problem of describing the text - what we call characteristic in our Dictionary. A philologist who reads literature of the third and fourth series must master the methods of describing texts. But it turns out that the characteristics are the most difficult thing. The author of the article needs to answer the question whether the work of his hero is secondary, whether there were creative moments in him... Some philologists believe that this is not necessary, the main thing is to provide a bibliography. This is how an article is sometimes structured: in such and such a year, such and such a story was published. Dot. What is the story, about what, why, how? After all, there are not enough reviews of third-tier literature , and there is nothing to hide behind. If someone scolded you or, conversely, praised you, it’s good, you can cling to it. If our hero is mentioned in a letter from a great writer, great! Well, what if this is not the case? By the way, this is a problem for our entire philology. Sometimes comments are constructed completely arbitrarily, even in academic publications. You have accumulated some material, one way or another connected with the text, and you give it. And if this is not there, then there is nothing. For questions, suggested by the text itself , the philologist does not always answer. It would seem that our Dictionary provides a unique opportunity to say something about a writer, about a work for the first time in 100-150 years. But a situation arises when there is nothing to say . That is, you can, of course, present a biography...

Try running a quiz in your magazine: give readers a literary description of a famous work (not a retelling!) and ask them to guess what it is about.

G.Z. : There are no stamps, nothing bothers you... But it turns out it’s scary to be left without stamps, freedom turns out to be unbearable.

S.A.: Philological science does not take the trouble to comprehend literary phenomena from the inside. Most often they talk about something around the work. History of creation, correspondence, prototypes, work in modern criticism - you name it. Literature dissolves in everything that is around. But there is no literary fact itself, as the formalists said.

Young authors are no worse than old ones, on the contrary: the trouble is that they are the same, brought up in the same not always fruitful traditions.

G.Z. : It turns out like this: it seems that the Dictionary is a factual thing, but factuality alone is not enough here; interpretation is required. And this interpretation, in a certain sense, turns out to be almost more complex than when we talk about the classics.

S.A.: There is already a tradition of interpreting the classics; there are a lot of ready-made opinions. But here they are not. This is where the whole value of our philology is visible. What can she do? Just reading the work turns out to be extremely difficult.

G.Z. : And this problem has existed since the first volume?

S.A.: She was less noticeable.

G.Z. : Why?

S.A.: In the first volume, a lot of formal problems were solved. And then, everything was much shorter: the glossary was shorter, the articles themselves were shorter, the description was perceived as something beyond the program.

G.Z. : Remember, you said that ideology is falling out of the consciousness of the younger generation of philologists. What did you mean?

S.A.: Ideology has recently become a dirty word. De-ideologization is good form and a guarantee of objectivity. These, of course, are illusions, because there is always some kind of ideology. She may be very weak and bad, but you still can’t do without it. The Dictionary's experience shows that ideology has not gone away. For example, the story of when they didn’t miss an article about S. Nilus. This is proof that ideology, although it has become unofficial, is no less fraught with unpleasant consequences. Here - there is no censorship. Fine? Fine. But there is censorship, censorship in a different form. Previously, it was located in room number five or four, but now it is everywhere. It’s bad when anyone who wishes takes on the function of a censor, and he can always organize public opinion, as happened with the article about Nilus, which was quite innocent.

G.Z. : Can you give more details?

S.A.: in more detail This situation is described (Ivan Serdtsev. “Who is afraid of Sergei Nilus” // “Tithe (Newspaper of Orthodox laity)”, 1999, ##17-18, p. 11. - G.Z. ) .

G.Z. : Was there only one such case?

S.A.: The only failure and blatant one. Since I edited the article, when it was decided whether it should exist or not, I turned to authoritative people, in particular to the publicist Mikhail Yakovlevich Gorelik , who was knowledgeable about the “Jewish question . ” He looked at the article, made several specific comments, and when I asked whether it was possible to publish it, he replied: “Not publishing this article would be a great defeat of common sense.” But when I asked him for a written review, he said that he was not an expert on Nilus. It would seem that there is nothing to be afraid of... There are subjects that are not so acute, but relate to almost every article. The difficulty lies in the approach, in whether certain questions should or should not be asked. For example, is it necessary to mention in an article about Merezhkovsky that he was a member of a Masonic lodge, established for two people - for him and Zinaida Nikolaevna .

G.Z. : Was this a Masonic lodge? He didn't organize this himself without any connection with...?

S.A.: He couldn’t organize it himself, that doesn’t happen, it was a real Masonic lodge. Even if this is not so - although there could not be any documents here - is it still necessary to talk about their strange rituals in the article or not? Lavrov, the author, thinks not. This is, of course, an ideological position.

Or, let’s say, it is believed that in an article about Miliukov criticism from the right should not be mentioned at all, even bibliographically, which is absurd, in my opinion. It’s strange when the editor has to write into the bibliography - after talking with the author of the article - an entire book (not even a review!) dedicated to Miliukov.

G.Z. : Did the author know about the existence of this book?

S.A.: I think so. I should have known. I believe that this is a manifestation of ideological narrow-mindedness. It seems to be a focus on objectivity, but in fact there is a reluctance to take into account another point of view, sometimes a very serious one. Labels are immediately attached: church obscurantists, Black Hundreds...

And further. We are not always able to fit a writer into the context of his era. Apparently, there are few books of a general nature, such as Florovsky’s “Ways of Russian Theology.”

G.Z. : Is there no need for an overall view or is it just too complicated?

S.A.: Too complicated, but also really unfashionable. Why should we discuss all sorts of general things, let’s deal with a specific matter, specific material... Our Dictionary arose in many respects on this wave, but it still inevitably runs into global problems.

G.Z. : It would seem that now such general works could appear, because you can freely talk about everything and everyone.

S.A.: They refused to consider Russian culture from the point of view of the stages of the liberation movement, but, by the way, I didn’t see anything new. Instead, nothing came up. But there were once successful attempts to overcome the left-radical scheme - by Volynsky, for example.

G.Z. : Then another question. Nilus was not in the Dictionary, but what about left-wing radical writers? Do authors choose such characters? It’s difficult to write about the far right, but what about the far left?

S.A.: No less difficult.

G.Z. : In Soviet times, a lot was written about left-wing writers.

S.A.: But they rarely wrote successfully. Even such figures as Herzen and Korolenko were depicted in a very one-sided manner. Only, perhaps, in the 20s something useful was published, when they had not yet had time to crush it. Thus Chernyshevsky was compromised . They made him into a scarecrow, an uninteresting person, a completely mediocre writer and a boring thinker. This is a merit of Soviet literary criticism.

G.Z. : But there was something in it?

S.A.: I think so. It is no coincidence that Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov , oddly enough, sympathized with Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov - for their raznochinsky awkwardness, perhaps, provincialism, common with him.

G.Z. : When will the fifth volume of the Dictionary be released?

S.A.: It's hard to say. I told you about the widow, no? Almost a gospel story. We were in despair, we are still almost in despair, because our sponsors do not pay. They entered into an agreement with us for the fifth volume, but not a ruble of money. But we have to pay both the authors and the archivists. And an amazing story happened. There was this Dima Muravyov, now deceased. His widow, a woman burdened with worries, poverty, and illness, sold the apartment left to her after the death of her parents, and donated two thousand dollars from the proceeds to the Dictionary, in memory of Dima. Just like a widow's mite. We wrote everywhere we went for a whole year - to the Cultural Foundation, etc. - so far nothing but promises.

G.Z. : And who was this Dima Muravyov?

S.A.: A writer associated with dissident affairs. He signed letters, and he was kicked out of work; he could no longer get a job anywhere. But he worked part-time: Sergei Georgievich Bocharov and his other friends gave him work, wrote articles for the Encyclopedia (KLE), and existed as a free artist.

G.Z. : Do you need a lot of money for the fifth volume?

S.A.: Tom - about 20 thousand dollars. By and large, quite a bit. But for the Russian Humanitarian Foundation or the Cultural Foundation this is too much money. The grant is given for publishing, which means that 40% will not go to the Dictionary.

G.Z. : Is the dictionary completely unprofitable?

S.A.: Absolutely, it is slowly selling out. The point is also that the circulation is in the hands of our sponsors, and they do not know how to sell books. How this is done now: a person goes to St. Petersburg, loads several packs of books into the car and sells them in the Pushkin House . That's all. Even St. Petersburg is provided with a Dictionary only at the level of the Pushkin House. It would be possible to sell books wholesale - but for some reason they don’t want to do this, the circulation is lying, but for this it “lies”, you have to pay for rent.

G.Z. : What was the circulation?

S.A.: 20 thousand. Not much for a reference book.

G.Z. : The Dictionary wasn’t distributed to libraries either?

S.A.: I was in Khimki the other day (at a branch of the Russian State Library , in the newspaper department - G.Z. ) - and they only had the second volume there. Just imagine - this is after all the Lenin Library! There is one in the central building - but do you know why? Lyudmila Makarovna (L.M. Shchemeleva, editor of the Dictionary - G.Z. ) gave it to them.

G.Z. : Where is the Dictionary sold in Moscow?

S.A.: Now, finally, the fourth volume is being sold in the subscription store on Kuznetsky (as the first was once). The second and third were not sold.

G.Z. : Where can I buy the second and third volumes?

S.A.: Our sponsors, Feonit, and the editorial office.