Trashy Novels and Bloody Noses

In contrast to numerous other book exhibitions and fairs, Moscow’s Fifth International Book Festival, which was held last week, did not focus on the promotion and sale of new publications but on facilitating direct communication between authors, readers and critics.

The collapse of the market for books in the 1990s is typically attributed to the hardships of Russia’s difficult transition to a market economy. People had no money, and publishers lacked the capital to finance the publishing of new books. But more important and troubling was that readers of books all but vanished as a consumer group.

One of the achievements that Soviet Union could proudly boast of is that a large percentage of the population voraciously read serious books covering science fiction, history, literature and culture. The Soviet intelligentsia were avid readers. They read Novy Mir, circulated dog-eared underground publications, or samizdat, among themselves and could cite passages from leading U.S. science fiction novels by heart, while dreaming of the day when the Soviet Union would open itself and allow free cultural exchanges with the outside world.

Although the Soviet Union practiced censorship, that did not mean that the books it published were necessarily provincial or primitive. The writing was often outstanding, and many books had enormous print runs.

But as the Soviet intelligentsia disappeared with the collapse of the Soviet Union, so did serious books. Now the only books filling Russian bookstores are cheap detective novels and other trash. Not surprisingly, the number of Russian books translated into foreign languages has fallen dramatically over the past 20 years.

Although the Soviet intelligentsia can never be restored, new readers can be created who are capable of at least partially combining the tradition of the avid Russian reader with a European range of interests.

That is exactly the task that Boris Kupriyanov, the organizer of the book festival, and his associates have set out to accomplish. No less important are the efforts of another hero of modern Russian culture — publisher and editor Valerian Anashvili, thanks to whom Russian readers now have access to dozens of Western books on history, sociology, philosophy and political science. Even after becoming editor-in-chief of the Higher School of Economics publishing house in Moscow, Anashvili has managed to continue his other publishing projects, producing 17 new titles in only six months with more expected by the end of the year.

Publishing and selling books is a time-consuming and nerve-wracking occupation. This is particularly true when the goal is not to make money but to promote talented authors who can restore the country to its rightful place as a global center of literature.

In the best Russian tradition, the book festival ended with a fight among the organizers and participants. But I am comforted by the fact that only the Russia intelligentsia —

although their numbers are much smaller now — are capable of being so passionate about literature that they would give one another bloody noses over something they have read.