Subject
Mashenka in the Soviet Union, 1978 (fwd)
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------------------ A recent article by Arlen Blyum has a passing mention of
Nabokov worth noting: Blyum's "George Orwell in the Soviet Union: A
Documentary Chronicle on the Centenary of his Birth" reprints or summarizes
numerous documents he's located in Russian archives on this subject,
and one of them is a letter dated 8 June 1978 from the KGB to the
Literary Directorate of the Leningrad Region and City, asking whether
any of the books in a certain list were "permitted for publication and
circulation in the USSR". Blyum says:
The list appended contains seventeen books published abroad, among
them, besides Orwell's 1984: Mashenka, by Nabokov (Sirin),
Zamyatin's My [We], Boris Pilnyak's Povest nepogashennoi luny [Tale
of the Unextinguished Moon], collections of works by Nikolai
Gumilev and Osip Mandelshtam, Marina Tsvetaeva's Prose, Boris
Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, and Andrei Platonov's Chevengur. All
these books had evidently been confiscated in a search that led to
the investigation of "case no. 86" (unfortunately the archive gives
no indication of the name(s) of the accused). At that time, unlike
in previous years, the security organs, to maintain some semblance
of legality, sent the confiscated books for expert opinion.
A week later the response came, condemning every book in the list.
There may be some specific discussion of Mashenka in this response,
but Blyum only quotes the passage on 1984.
The article appears in The Library, seventh series, 4:4, December
2003, 402-416, translated by I. P. Foote; the quotation above is from
page 412.
John Lavagnino
King's College London
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L
Nabokov worth noting: Blyum's "George Orwell in the Soviet Union: A
Documentary Chronicle on the Centenary of his Birth" reprints or summarizes
numerous documents he's located in Russian archives on this subject,
and one of them is a letter dated 8 June 1978 from the KGB to the
Literary Directorate of the Leningrad Region and City, asking whether
any of the books in a certain list were "permitted for publication and
circulation in the USSR". Blyum says:
The list appended contains seventeen books published abroad, among
them, besides Orwell's 1984: Mashenka, by Nabokov (Sirin),
Zamyatin's My [We], Boris Pilnyak's Povest nepogashennoi luny [Tale
of the Unextinguished Moon], collections of works by Nikolai
Gumilev and Osip Mandelshtam, Marina Tsvetaeva's Prose, Boris
Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, and Andrei Platonov's Chevengur. All
these books had evidently been confiscated in a search that led to
the investigation of "case no. 86" (unfortunately the archive gives
no indication of the name(s) of the accused). At that time, unlike
in previous years, the security organs, to maintain some semblance
of legality, sent the confiscated books for expert opinion.
A week later the response came, condemning every book in the list.
There may be some specific discussion of Mashenka in this response,
but Blyum only quotes the passage on 1984.
The article appears in The Library, seventh series, 4:4, December
2003, 402-416, translated by I. P. Foote; the quotation above is from
page 412.
John Lavagnino
King's College London
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L