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Global histories a student journal Manuscripts Don’t Burn: The Master and Margarita as a Case Study of Samizdat in an Extra Gutenberg Culture Author: Julia Boechat Machado DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/GHSJ.2019.331 Source: Global Histories, Vol. 5, No. 2 (November 2019), pp. 24-38. ISSN: 2366-780X Copyright © 2019 Julia Boechat Machado License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Publisher information: ‘Global Histories: A Student Journal’ is an open-access bi-annual journal founded in 2015 by students of the M.A. program Global History at Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. ‘Global Histories’ is published by an editorial board of Global History students in association with the Freie Universität Berlin. Freie Universität Berlin Global Histories: A Student Journal Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut Koserstraße 20 14195 Berlin Contact information: For more information, please consult our website www.globalhistories.com or contact the editor at: [email protected]. Manuscripts don’t burn: The Master and Margarita as a case study of Samizdat in an Extra Gutenberg Culture by JULIA BOECHAT MACHADO Julia Boechat Machado | Manuscripts don’t burn 25 VI - 2 - 2019 | The Master and Margarita Global Histories: a student journal ABSTRACT New methods and theoretical approaches to the study of Samizdat - self-publishing and autonomous circulation of texts in the Soviet Union - have been challenging the traditional views that portray it as a mere form of dissident activity. classified it as an a study by Historian Ann Komaromi Recently, because distinct from “print culture” Gutenberg culture, extra its characteristics of standardization, dissemination and it lacks Samizdat, in comparison, was spontaneously copied and fixity. distributed, and even altered by anonymous volunteers, and Other oppositions for too long by its instability. was marked used in the study of Samizdat are also becoming obsolete: Stalinism official publishers and culture versus dissidents, or novel Bulgakov’s versus the Thaw. is an interesting case study for new perspectives in Samizdat being because it was part of official and unofficial culture, officially published, circulating as Samizdat, and becoming the inspiration of a collection of thousands of graffiti that It was also relevant in different phases appeared in Moscow. when it was written, to the late from Stalinism, of Soviet history, Soviet years when it gained cult status. When the novel was published, censors did not cut parts that showed an ideology opposite to Soviet ideas of religion, the part of the novel that could more easily be regarded as dissident, but references When the novel started to the housing crisis and to nudity. circulating as a Samizdat, with the censored parts taped of the official institutions, showing to it, it made a mockery of the unreliability of its publication system, the existence censorship and its pettiness, and how the same deficiencies the author satirized remained common in the Soviet Union The case study will therefore show how the twenty years later. new perspectives in the study of Samizdat give insight into the wider political implications of a work of fiction. n r u trial would soon also receive wide b INTRODUCTION t ’ n circulation as Samizdat. o d Samizdat and related The second part is dedicated s t p i r practices were present in several to practices and examples in c s u different epochs of the Soviet Union, Samizdat through a literature review. n a even if with different intensity and Historian Ann Komaromi’s work was M | focus. The mere importance given one of the main sources, with special o d a to the censorship and publishing regard to her concept of Samizdat h c a of literary and poetic text can be as an extra-Gutenberg culture, M t a enriching in order to analyze Russian examining common characteristics h c e cultural history. it has with the beginning of “print o B With this purpose, this culture”, before the standardization, a i l u paper is divided in three sections. dissemination and fixity that we J The first one tells a brief history of see as typical of print culture had Samizdat, focusing on its origins occurred. I also look into the modern and development throughout the critiques to the opposition between twentieth century. Even though the the studies of Samizdat as an practice can be traced at least to instrument for spreading literature the beginning of the Revolution, the and as a vehicle for dissident activity. self-publishing of literature became Distributing censored literature can more common during the Thaw. be seen as a political act, even if the At the same time that this brief novel itself is not overtly political, phase of a politically liberalizing and for this reason the opposition is atmosphere allowed poet Evgueni reductionist and has been challenged Evtushenko to read his poetry in in more recent works. stadiums and young people to meet The third part presents in Moscow under Pushkin’s statue the mentioned case-study, the to read poetry, Doctor Zhivago was publication of the novel The Master censored and then smuggled abroad and Margarita decades after it had to be published. The very event - been written. The novel quickly considered to put an end to the Thaw became part of the official culture, - is related to the Samizdat publishing being published in a magazine of fiction: the Siniavsky-Daniel just after the Siniavsky-Daniel trial, trial, marking the first time writers and unofficial culture, circulating were convicted for writing works of as Samizdat and inspiring popular fiction since the show trials of the expressions and thousands of Stalinist era. Both were convicted graffiti in Moscow. Because of the under article 70 of the penal code, complex history of its publication, the “Agitation and Propaganda with the novel is not only a case study in an purpose of subverting or weakening extra-Gutenberg culture, but also a the Soviet regime,” despite the fact challenge to common portrayals of that they protested their innocence. Samizdat. The retelling of the events in the 26 Global Histories: a student journal | VI - 2 - 2019 J u l i abroad in the 1920s to avoid Soviet a A BRIEF HISTORY OF SAMIZDAT B o censorship. e c h The origins of the practice According to Peter Steiner, a t of sharing typed uncensored texts the production and distribution of M a c in Soviet Russia are difficult to trace. Samizdat increased much after the h a 3 d According to prominent dissident fall of Stalinism. In February 1956, o | writer Siniavsky, it started as a Khrushchev gave his famous speech M a n mass practice in the 1950s with the called On the Cult of Personality u s c copying of the poetry of writers and Its Consequences, in which r i p t such as Anna Akhmatova and he denounced Stalin for having s d o Boris Pasternak, that had become distorted Leninist principles and n ’ 1 t inaccessible in the published form. establishing a cult of personality. The b u r But the term Samizdat has since speech was often read in meetings n been used retroactively, referring of the Communist Party and the to texts published and distributed Komsomol, but it was not meant to be autonomously during Tsarist times. distributed widely. However, it soon Other authors prefer to refer to these started circulating as a Samizdat as proto-Samizdat. The neologism and it was also smuggled abroad Samizdat is attributed to poet Nikolai and published in the Western press. Glazkov, who typed his poetry in There was unrest following the notebooks and distributed it to speech, with reports that members of friends during the 1940s with the the audience reacted with applause imprint “samsebiaizdat”, roughly and laughter whenever it was translatable as “myself publisher”. read, while others were reported The term Samizdat became common to have suffered heart attacks or among Moscow’s elite in the 1950s attempted suicide. It provoked strong and gained a wider usage in the reactions, and “Nowhere did the cry 1960s, when references to it started for liberalization sound more loudly appearing in the official press.2 than in literature”.4 Writers became A related practice was Tamizdat, bolder in exposing the Soviet Union, “over there publishing”, smuggling the crimes committed by the State, manuscripts out of the Soviet Union and the miseries of everyday life to be published abroad. As with that undermined the notion of a Samizdat, the word has been used to communist paradise. However, in the refer to previous events, specifically same year limits were made clear about the works of Boris Pilniak when Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago and Evgueni Zamyatin, published was denied publishing and smuggled 1 Serguei Oushakine, “The Terrifying Mimicry of 3 P. Steiner, “Introduction: On Samizdat, Tamizdat, Samizdat,” Public Culture 13, no. 2 (2001): 191- Magnitizdat, and Other Strange Words That Are 214, doi:10.1215/08992363-13-2-191 Difficult to Pronounce,” Poetics Today 29, no. 4 2 Ann Komaromi, Uncensored: Samizdat (2008): 613-628, doi:10.1215/03335372-079. Novels and the Quest for Autonomy in Soviet 4 Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Dissidence (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern Ritual (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2000) University Press, 2015), 132. 211. Global Histories: a student journal | VI - 2 - 2019 27 n r u abroad as a Tamizdat in 1957. Dmitri who also frequented the meetings, b t ’ n Pospielovsky understands that were afterwards arrested for creating o d event as the impetus for the birth of and distributing Samizdat journals s t p i r Samizdat as we know it today, as a dedicated to poetry. c s 5 u parallel culture to the official press.