Knygotyra (Dec 2006)
THE BOOK PUBLISHING SYSTEM IN ESTONIA DURING THE SOVIET RULE IN 1944–1991
Abstract
The article treats the changes in the direction of the publishing activities, the formation of the network of the state book publishing houses as well as the political and economic conditions of their activities in Estonia during the second Soviet occupation in 1944–1991. These years have been divided in three periods according to political history: the Stalinist era in 1944–1956; the thawand stagnation in 1956–1986 and the political break-through leading to the restoration of independence in 1987–1991.Special attention is paid to the leading role of the Communist Party of the USSR and the Communist Party of the ESSR in publishing activities. For example, only the all-union communist party had a right to decide over the establishment of new publishing houses, the leading officials of the local and all-union communist party studied and confirmed the reports and plans of the publishers etc. For the implementation of the regulations of the communist party a specialadministrative body was established, operating under different names in different years. For example, during the all-union reform of 1949 it was called the Central Board of Printing Industry, Publishing and Book Trade by the Council of Ministers, after the reform of 1963 – the State Publishing Committee. The latter had especially wide authority and gave detailed instructions on organising the work in the publishing houses. The directions included rigid requirements about the planning process and co-ordination of the plans on local and all-union level. The co-ordination of plans became especially complex since 1975 when the publishing houses had to get consent fromthe Head Office of Thematic Planning and Co-ordination of the all-union State Publishing Committee for every manuscript they wished to include in their plans. Although this system was unable to function, it was not revoked. All this demonstrates the dependence of the Estonian publishing from the all-union directions and lack of its own publishing policy. The network of state book publishing houses experienced some changes during the all-union reforms in the book branch in 1949 and 1963. Only few publishing houses were active in Estonia during the whole period, only one publisher existed in Estonia in 1949–1957, in 1986 four state publishing houses issued books, one of them being a periodical publisher with a department forbooks in foreign languages. The small number of publishers had negative impact on the diversity of book production and for authors, whose possibilities to publish their works were limited. For example, there was no special publishing house for scholarly literature, which inhibited the development of many research areas.Major reforms of the system started in 1987, influenced by the changes in the political conditions. During the following years publishing became a right of every organisation and person who was interested in issuing publications. The number of publishers grew rapidly. The economic principles of publishing were also gradually adjusted to market economy.
