The Thinking Reed

Unexpectedly, all this growth of interest has in no way subverted the position of samizdat. In fact the opposite has happened: as official publications have become freer, the number and the circulation of unofficial publications have grown as well. Undoubtedly the most important of these is the Leningrad publication Merkur [Mercury]. The city’s authorities cannot afford to ignore it. The Moscow newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya (Soviet Russia) has referred to it as a reliable source of information. The journal’s editor, Yelena Zelinskaya, has great authority both in unofficial and official journalistic circles. The quarterly journal is disseminated in more than a thousand copies — a remarkable circulation for a typewritten publication.

The samizdat journals of the Gorbachev period can be divided into various categories. First of all, the literary journals and almanacs, many of which have existed since the Brezhnev period, continue to appear. They include Chasy [Hours], Obvodny Kanal [The Obvodny Canal] and Mitin zhurnal [Mitya’s journal] in Leningrad, Tret'ya modernizatsiya [Third Modernization] in Riga, and so on. In most cases these publications bring together poets and prose writers from various avant-garde groups who, while not very interested in politics, have long been in conflict with the official Union of Writers. The relatively apolitical nature of such journals helped them to survive even through the period when the samizdat press was being most vigorously suppressed. Alongside the literary magazines, rock music journals such as Roxy in Leningrad and Ukho [The Ear] in Moscow have sprung up.

In the opinion of II'ya Smirnov, who is one of the ideologists of, and a regular contributor to, these magazines, what we are seeing here is no longer just an artistic phenomenon: it has taken on a social dimension, since rock music is linked to the growing movement of the ‘Soviet new Left’.

It is this movement which is providing the basic stimulus for the development of ‘new samizdat’. Its success is due above all to the close link between the journal and a Leningrad Left informal group called Epicentre. The activities of Epicentre and its rival organization, the Council for the Ecology of Culture (SEK), have become widely known beyond Leningrad. Despite tactical differences between them, these two groups constitute a kind of bloc of ecologists and neo-Marxists which is a little like the West German Green Party. They organize discussions and wage a campaign against the demolition of old buildings and against economic plans which will destroy the ecological balance. Many leftist clubs and groups are growing up not only in Leningrad but throughout the country. They either attempt to issue their own typescript bulletins, or exchange information through the most popular samizdat journals. The Leningrad perestroika club publishes a bulletin called Perekryostok mneniy [Crossroads of opinions], and in the same city a club of ‘revolutionary Marxists’ with the peaceful name Adelaida [Adelaide] disseminates its journal Voves' rost [Standing Upright]. In Moscow the Obshchina [Commune] socialist club is publishing an information bulletin once a fortnight called Den' za dnyom [Day by Day].

The most serious publications are all linked in one way or another with associations of clubs. The first meeting of unofficial leftist groups from all over the country took place in Moscow in August 1987. It decided to create a ‘Circle of Social Initiative’ and a Federation of Socialist Social Clubs (FSOK). The ‘Circle’, conceived by its founders as a wide association of cultural, ecological and political clubs without a single ideology or platform, has not really developed substantially, although its prospects remain good. The FSOK, on the other hand, has, in the few months since the August meeting, become a competent and united organization, in no small measure thanks to the appearance of its own samizdat journal, first called by the neutral title of Svidetel' [Witness], but in November renamed Levy povorot [Left Turn].