Glavlit and the Fate of Literary and Art Magazines in 1931–1932 (Krasnaya Nov’, Novy Mir, etc.)

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the consideration of organizational measures applied by the highest party and state bodies (the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) and Glavlit) for reorganizing the editorial boards of the main literary and art magazines at the turn of 1931 –1932 (Krasnaya Nov’, Novy Mir, Oktyabr, Zvezda, etc.). In this regard, the paper uncovers the special role of B.M. Volin, whose appointment to the post of the head of Glavlit in June 1931 could, in the author's opinion, be one of the consequences of familiarizing the Politburo of the Central Committee with A.P. Platonov’s story “For the Future”. On the basis of previously known and newly discovered documentary evidence, the article reconstructs the chronology of the editorial boards reformatting, which was started actively, but extended for months; it is noted that, despite the comparable degree of vulnerability of the executive editors of Krasnaya Nov’ (A. Fadeev) and Novy Mir (V. Polonsky), the measures applied to them were not equivalent. In order to assess the disorganization that arose in the course of the administrative audit of the editorial and publishing process, the output data of the magazines for the period under discussion are included in the review. Similar data, coupled with printed content announcements, make it possible to especially assess the damage done to Novy Mir. The paper is accompanied by the publication of a number of archival documents revealing the mechanisms for working out the “issue of magazines” in the bowels of the Central Committee and Glavlit, and a partial publication of the minutes of the Writers' Union Organizing Committee, involved in solving the problem at the final stage.

Keywords

• glavlit
• the central committee of the cpsu (b)
• literary and art magazines
• novy mir
• krasnaya nov’
• b.m. volin
• v.p. polonsky
• a.a. fadeev