Documented History of the “World Literature” Publishing House: Financial Aspect (1918–1921)

Abstract

The aim of our study is to analyze the financial aspect of the history of the publishing house “World Literature” bearing on the material of the state archives (Maxim Gorky Archive of the A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences in particular). The archival materials demonstrate that the main factor in gaining access to finance in the early years of the RSFSR were personal relations that had become the only reliable source of income in the destabilized post-October Revolution economy. The Bolshevik leaders who came to power mainly counted on their pre-revolutionary allies and relatives, a motley crowd in the ideological sense. There was a sharp competition for property and finance between the newly created People’s Commissars whose leaders were Lenin’s proxies. The decisions made by the Council of People’s Commissars, by the Politburo, and by various party commissions were not implemented, or even openly sabotaged in many cases when it came to financing certain sectors of the economy or culture. The competition between the People’s Commissariat for Education in Moscow (Lunacharsky) and the State Publishing House (controlled by Zinoviev and his entourage) was the determining factor in the history of financing the publishing house “World Literature.”

Keywords

• publishing house “world literature
• ” state publishing house
• people’s commissariat of education
• maxim gorky
• lunacharsky
• lenin
• grzhebin
• financial policy
• financing.