Inside the Soviet Writers' Union - Hardcover

Garrard, John; Garrard, Carol

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1850432600 ISBN 13: 9781850432609

Publisher: I.B. Tauris, 1990

Synopsis

The USSR's Writer's Union, a form of cultural and political organization unknown in the West, has ruled every aspect of Russian writers' private and professional lives from the time of Stalin to the present day. This book shows how the union has operated over the last five decades.

About this title

From Library Journal

The Garrards sketch the history of censorship in Imperial Russia, the new Communist state's gradual crackdown on free expression after 1917, the formation of the union in 1934, and its role in enforcing conformity from Stalin's reign of terror to the present reform era. They have sought the testimony of emigre, dissident, and loyalist writers to show how the Union's Communist infrastructure treats members both to "gingerbread" (access to prestigious journals and large press runs; superior housing, health care, etc.) and "whips" (psychological pressures with Draconian laws behind them). Since other Soviet elite organizations operate the same way, this is an important book full of insights beyond its subject into Gorbachev's apparent gamble on transforming the extant bureaucratic apparatus into agents of his Socialist perestroika.
- Mary F. Zirin, Altadena, Cal.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1850432600
• ISBN 13: 9781850432609
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 300