Connexe: Exploring Post-Communist Spaces

This paper examines the transition of the Soviet publishing system from a highly centralized and controlled socialist to a market-based model between the late 1980s and the mid-1990s. The study focuses on the case of ‘Progress Publishers’ [Издательство Прогресс] (1963-1996), the only publishing house specialized in translating Soviet literature into foreign languages for export, which had successfully reinvented itself as the main promoter of the glasnost movement within the publishing field in the USSR during the perestroika years. Through its political engagement in support of the reforms and its quest for professional autonomy, this publisher contributed to the democratization of the public sphere and the destatization of the publishing sector in the country. The article thus examines the social and political conditions as well as the actors’ strategies that made this conversion possible, drawing on archival sources, specialized press, memoirs by former managers of the publishing house and semi-structured interviews. The aim of this study is to contribute to recent research into the historical sociology and intellectual history of publishing in Russia, and to shed light on the crucial period of transition from a Soviet to a post-Soviet context.

This article is based on a research which aim is to determine the circulation modalities of the French language literature translated into Croatian since 1991. We mainly focus on the position of the French language literature in the Croatian publishing houses’ catalogs, criteria for selecting titles for translation, available subventions, cooperation with different actors in the literary field, and marketing strategies used to promote translated books. After a presentation of the Croatian publishing industry and literary translations from French between 1991 and 2020, we process and analyse data collected through a survey sent to the Croatian publishers via the online platform LimeSurvey. Then we present our conclusions regarding the circulation of the French literary texts in the Croatian culture from 1991 onwards, the position of translated literature in Croatian culture and society, the social conditions of literary production, the logic of the market, the structure of the literary field and the transnational circulation of literary texts.

After the violent break-up of the Yugoslav Federation in 1991 and the end of the socialist regime, the professional book industry was reorganised within the new state and national borders, both in the former Serbo-Croatian language zone and in the Slovenian, Macedonian and Albanian-speaking territories. The large public companies combining publishing, printing and distribution activities have given way to a multitude of more or less permanent private players. Yugoslavia’s successor states have attempted to redefine book distribution channels and forms of legitimacy within the new borders. However, from the early 2000s onwards, the narrowness of markets, linguistic and cultural proximity and new post-Yugoslav cooperation encouraged publishers, authors, and distributors to expand their distribution territories, despite material and political difficulties. Furthermore, bibliographic information is an area where cooperation has proved necessary, both to manage heritage collections and to document recent releases. This article looks at several examples of the tensions between the assertion of a national –and often linguistic– territory of book production/distribution and phenomena that escape or contradict it.

This article focuses on a small group of Russian children’s publishing houses that emerged between 2003 and 2013, claiming a critical stance towards the commercial “mass production” of national majors. Their editorial portfolio, anchored in the global children’s literature market, aims to foster literature that conveys “humanist values” in order to popularise the idea of “citizen of a world without borders”. The article analyses the legitimising strategies used by the founders and foundresses of these publishing houses to assert their autonomy in relation to the big corporations and the state; the oscillations of this group between the pole of restricted publishing and that of commercial production; and the way in which they build and negotiate their presence both on the national territory and on the global market. Weakened and threatened with repression by the authoritarian hardening of the Russian political regime, the publishing houses in this study play on the subtle balance between confidentiality and notoriety, constantly creating and expanding communities of thought that include book professionals and readers.

This article examines the transformation of the activity and the ideological agenda of the right-wing Russian publishing house ‘Black Centurion’ [Черная Сотня] and its associated bookshops, Foliage [Листва], in Moscow and St Petersburg, in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It was created in the 2010s as a student project sought as reviving the image of nationalism by making it attractive to young people. Its editorial line aimed to glorify pre-revolutionary Russia and white Russian emigration, while being very critical about the USSR and adopting a skeptical stance towards today’s Russia. A second editorial line, which was more discreet at the time, consisted in hagiographies of the “independence fighters” of Donetsk and Luhansk. The associated bookshops, with their wider and more eclectic range, were places for socializing and debate that broadened the community, sometimes opening up a dialogue with left-wing thinkers. The war in Ukraine has upset the established balance: the hagiographic component has become the publishing house’s sole editorial line, while the bookshops, which have become less accessible to the public, now bring together a more radicalized community that supports the war in Ukraine, resulting in a recomposition of collaborations and networks.

The Russian aggression against Ukraine in February 2022 re-established censorship within Russia itself, while also causing a restructuring of the publishing industry. In record time, outside of Russia, a censorship-free book chain was organized, comparable to the tamizdat of the Soviet era, and including publishers, booksellers, literary prizes, distributors, fairs, and critical media.

The article examines this very recent phenomenon, based on the analysis of publications and interviews with the actors of this new book industry. It analyzes the symbolic and commercial stakes, editorial strategies and distribution of the new tamizdat.

Ciryl Prost interviews the historian Adjarbek Kočkunov, a citizen of the Soviet Union and then of the Kyrgyz Republic, who recounts the post-Soviet transformations of his country through his life.