The Russian Reading Revolution: Print Culture in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Eras by Stephen s> Lovell (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 36I and ideological power has not been achieved, and in which consequently- all civil and political power and decision-makingis reservedto an individualor group claiming for a variety of reasons- to possess the authorityto act for the entire polity. (pp. vi, 3) Signalling his agreement with Vernon Aspaturian that authoritarianism must be considered an alternative or rival to democracy, rather than a more primitive stage of political development, Sugar notes how technocratic elites in Eastern Europe in the I930S believed that economic modernization could most effectively be realized if those groups associated with the 'old order' (including landlords and bankers) were marginalized and the powers of parliament reduced still further. The volume provides a fine introduction to some of the basic issues relating to nationalism in Eastern Europe, a topic with which Sugar has long been closely identified. East European Nationalism,Politics, andReligion could serve as an ideal supplemental text for upper division classes in East European history, as well as for graduate classes in European nationalism or in East European history. TheHMJ SchoolofInternational Studies SABRINA P. RAMET Universityof Washington Lovell, Stephen. TheRussian Reading Revolution: PrintCulture intheSoviet andPostSoviet Eras.Studies in Russia and East Europe. Macmillan, Basingstoke and London, and St Martin's Press, New York, 2000. Viii + 215 pp. Notes. Illustrations.Bibliography.Index. (42.50. THISis a very welcome addition to the modest corpusof scholarlytreatments in English of the Russian and Soviet printed media. In scope it is both long and broad, handling the entire period from the October Revolution to the present day (though with varying emphases) and giving a well-merited prominence to the periodicalpressalongsidebook publishing.Stephen Lovell begins with a wide-ranging introductory chapter which includes a short history of reading in Western Europe, then of reading in Russia. These lead into a review of the concepts of 'culture'which came to the fore in the newlyformed USSR, the central importance and high statuswhich were accorded to the act of reading, and the mythical image of the 'Soviet reader' to which they quicklygave riseand which finallysuccumbedonly to economic forcesin the I99os. In his next chapter, 'The Creation of the Soviet Reader', Lovell looks at the role of print culture as an instrumentfor the total re-education of Soviet readers as the literacy campaigns of the early I 920S induced the birth of a massreadership.The institutionalizationof reading,andthe normativemodel of kul'turnost', in a political culture totally hostile to the market as a guide or regulator for publishers, fostered the perception by the authorities of the reading public as a largely undifferentiated cohort. However, stimulating though his account is, we are not given even an outline here or later of the institutionalplayerswho held power over the publishingindustryand how they exercised it. Until the very late Soviet period, the Party'sPropaganda 362 SEER, 79, 2, 200I Department, the censorshiporgan Glavlit, and assortedministry-leveloffices such as Goskomizdatbetween them dictatedpolicy to publishersdown to the micro-level, far more compellingly and comprehensively than any influence exercisedby economic considerationsor readerdemand. Surprisinglylittle space is given to the Stalin years. Lovell may hold (thoughhe does not explicitly say so) that attitudesand policies in the Soviet printed media underwentlittle change between the early I930S and the midI950s , when his thirdchapterpicksup with 'The Arrivalof the New Reader'; but prima facie a quarter-centuryof rigorouscensorshipand political terror, which also included a fearful war, must have produced and subsequently reinforced massive effects on Soviet citizens as readers which deserve more attentionthan they receive here. The third chapter takes the action up to the end of 'stagnation'in the mid-i 980s. Lovell claims that what we see during these years are '[r]eaders who areincreasinglyable to makechoices aboutwhat they read [... .andwho] begin to thinkindependentlyof any would-be social ethos' (p. 69). There is a danger of circularityin the argumentthat readersbecome more selective and criticalbecause they have a widerrangeof booksfromwhich to choose. In the Soviet situation,it was as a resultof decisions made by the authorities,not by the publishers, which brought a larger assortiment into the bookshops and which determined its composition. As Lovell himself points out, the knithnyi bumof the seventies and early eighties resultedfrom a fairlylimited range of books being bought as commodities in...