Feed
donate Summary of NZ 68 (6/2009)
One of the main topics of NZ 68 (2009) is books: the writing of books, book releases, sale and reading. Swedish cultural historian Jesper Svenbro has researched the transition from reading aloud to reading silently to oneself in Ancient Greece. William Mahon describes the blossoming of the Irish hand-written underground press in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries when printing was already widespread. Svetlana Bykova analyses the function of the book in a tragic period of Soviet history – during the Great terror. This theme is continued by Polina Barskova in the article "The weight of the book: reading strategy in Leningrad under siege". Two conversations follow: the first is between NZ editor Andrey Zakharov and philosopher and literary critic Leonid Karasev on books and book culture; the second – between historian Nikolay Mitrokhin and executive of the office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Vadim Kostrov– is on his work with party printing and publishing houses. Connected to this is Alexander Kustarev's column "On leisure reading" (Political imaginary) and the fragment of the documentary Internet diary by literary critic and journalist Olga Balla, "Lytdybr of bibliofag" (Moral and more).
Another major topic of this issue is history and memory. "Features of historical consciousness" are considered by Dmitry Gorin. The "past" and "memory" in the context of totalitarianism and the escape from it are the topics presented by Galina Mikhaleva ("Overcoming the totalitarian past: foreign experience and Russian problems") and Anna Shor-Chudnovskaya ("Understanding the post-Soviet person"). "Holocaust: the ignored reality" by Timothy Snyder is published here as a kind of "transition" from theory to actual history. Then we deal exclusively with memories on a particular historical process – the struggle of the eastern European countries' peoples against communist regimes and after the total collapse of communism in the region. Alexander Stykalin analyses memories of 1956 in Hungary as an important factor for events in 1989 that led to a peaceful refusal of socialism. We present fragments from the diary of Soviet geophysicist Vladimir Vycherov who was in Poland in the heat of the strikes that saw the rise of Solidarity. Nikolay Morozov tries to answer what the nature of the bloody events in Romania in 1989 were; whether it is possible to speak about national revolution, or about a plot, and if the latter is the case, whether this plot is internal or external. The post-Soviet realities of former socialist eastern Europe are described by Ukrainian journalist Ayda Bolivar who analyses the pre-election political situation in Ukraine.
In the interview section we start with the conversation with Richard Pipes – the patriarch of American, Russian and Soviet studies and the author of numerous publications on Russian history. Then NZ editor Andrey Zakharov talks to philosopher, publisher and one of the founders of the Moscow School of Political Studies, Yuri Senokosov. They touch upon subjects of Russian history, civic education and, taking into account the main topic of the issue – book publishing.
Finally we would like to mention Alexander Bobrakov-Timoshkin's response to the new Czech edition of memoirs of the last president of the First Czechoslovak republic, Edvard Benes, and Irina Kosterina's review of Igor Kon's book Man in a Changing World.
Published 2010-01-21
Original in Russian
Contributed by Neprikosnovennij Zapas
© Neprikosnovennij Zapas
© Eurozine
Focal points click for more 
Social media 
