Progress on the Margin

A legion of “expert” Sovietologists both in Europe and in the United States has taken up the question of how much attention we should pay to Mikhail Gorbachev’s vaunted reforms. On almost any day in almost any major newspaper, you can find at least one opinion piece claiming to explore “the limits of glasnost.” But, at the very least, one must say that Gorbachev’s attempts at liberalization have had some effect in matters of free speech.

There has always existed in the Soviet Union a literature whose subtly concealed spirit of opposition only the alert and intelligent reader could “decipher” by reading between the lines; the literary monthly Novy Mir (nearly four hundred pages an issue) has been a most courageous source of such material. The authors and publishers of opposition literature run great risks, but the stakes are extremely high: in “eternal Russia” literature carries infinitely more weight than it does in the West. Writers and poets largely made Russian history, acting, for better or for worse, as pioneers and icebreakers. By the same token, the Russians are avid readers. Down to and including the working class, they read classics, contemporary works, anything they can get hold of; and they are prepared to spend incredible amounts for these treasures.

EK

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Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

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A legion of “expert” Sovietologists both in Europe and in the United States has taken up the question of how much attention we should pay to Mikhail Gorbachev’s vaunted reforms. On almost any day in almost any major newspaper, you can find at least one opinion piece claiming to explore “the limits of glasnost.” But, at the very least, one must say that Gorbachev’s attempts at liberalization have had some effect in matters of free speech.

There has always existed in the Soviet Union a literature whose subtly concealed spirit of opposition only the alert and intelligent reader could “decipher” by reading between the lines; the literary monthly Novy Mir (nearly four hundred pages an issue) has been a most courageous source of such material. The authors and publishers of opposition literature run great risks, but the stakes are extremely high: in “eternal Russia” literature carries infinitely more weight than it does in the West. Writers and poets largely made Russian history, acting, for better or for worse, as pioneers and icebreakers. By the same token, the Russians are avid readers. Down to and including the working class, they read classics, contemporary works, anything they can get hold of; and they are prepared to spend incredible amounts for these treasures.