Subscribing to Sovietdom: The Lives of the Socialist Literary Journal

By: Philip Tuxbury-Gleissner

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Synopsis: In the Soviet Union, literary journals were ubiquitous. Citizens read these so-called thick journals on crowded buses and debated the most recent issue with colleagues at work or friends at the kitchen table. Writers competed for spots in the most prestigious periodicals and formed communities around editorial offices that operated in a complex relationship with censorship and Party authorities. Significant resources were allocated to the design and production of these monthlies, with press runs in the hundreds of thousands and even millions at their peak. Subscribing to Sovietdom offers a comprehensive study of the socialist literary journal as a unique cultural form – from the early revolutionary years to the end of socialism – within the Soviet Union and abroad. Synthesizing visual and literary analysis of the periodicals, archive-based literary history, and computational approaches to the study of bibliographical data, the book reveals the medium in its role as literary institution, visual object of everyday life, and cultural event.