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The Fire Burns On? The “Fiery Revolutionaries” Biographical Series and the Rethinking of Propaganda in the Brezhnev Era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Polly Jones
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Abstract

In this article, I analyze the production of late Soviet propaganda, highlighting the shifts toward greater literary sophistication and the reinvention of revolutionary biography, instituted in order to re-enthuse the population about revolutionary ideals. In the Khrushchev and early Brezhnev eras, the State Political Publishing House (Politizdat) grappled with a profound crisis of political persuasion and came to realize that collaboration and compromise with literary writers constituted the only solution. The key outcome of this debate over mass political literature was the innovative and unpredictable “;Fiery Revolutionaries” series of biographies, published from 1968 to the end of the Soviet Union. Arguing against the view of the Brezhnev era as a time of political language's standardization, and complicating the binary opposition between Soviet and dissident writers, I argue that it was the sophisticated and nuanced debates and editorial practices within this “;niche” in the post- Stalinist propaganda state that ultimately enabled many of the period’s most talented (and sometimes notorious) writers to contribute sophisticated biographies to the series later in its history.

Type
Redefining Community in the Late Soviet Union
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 74 , Issue 1 , Spring 2015 , pp. 32 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2014

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References

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15. Ibid.

16. On increasing pressure to conserve paper supplies in the mid-late 1970s, see Tsentral'nyi arkhiv obshchestvenno-politicheskoi istorii Moskvy (TsAOPIM), f. 819, op. 1, d. 53 (Politizdat party organization meetings, 1978); RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 762, 1. 20 (April 2,1981, Politizdat general meeting about genres); and RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 388, 11.37-38 (main editorial board meeting, April 22,1976).

17. See, e.g., RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 762,1. 2.

18. Bacon, Edwin, “A Triumph of Ideological Hairdressing? Intellectual Life in the Brezhnev Era Reconsidered,” in Bacon, Edwin and Sandle, Mark, eds., Brezhnev Reconsidered (New York, 2002), 135-64;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Zubok, Vladislav, Zhivago's Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia(Cambridge, Mass., 2009), 321–26;Google Scholar and English, Robert, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War(New York, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 299,1.85 (main editorial board meeting, March 25,1965).

20. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), f. 9604, op. 2, d. 365,11.7-10 (State Committee on the Press meeting, February 19,1965).

21. On writers’ and readers’ fear of Politizdat's publications, see RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 299,1.18 (main editorial board meeting, February 17,1965); RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 288, 1.23 (meeting of Moscow writers with chief Politizdat editors, April 1,1964). For examples of references to “masters of the pen,” see, e.g., RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 69,11.17-20 (Politizdat's 1964 letter to the CC first outlining the Fiery Revolutionaries project); RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 288,1.7; and GARF, f. 9604, op. 2, d. 365,1.25 (State Committee on the Press 1965 correspondence about the series).

22. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 288,1. 86.

23. Taubman, William, Nikita Khrushchev: The Man and His Era(New York, 2003), 507–609;Google Scholar Harris, Jonathan, “After the Kratkii kurs:Soviet Leadership Conflict over Theoretical Education, 1956-61,” Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, no. 401 (October, 1984);Google Scholar and Linden, Carl, Khrushchev and the Soviet Leadership, 1957-1964(Baltimore, 1966), 117–82.Google Scholar

24. Pravda, June 28,1963,1; ibid., June 29,1963, 2-3. The main message of plenum, as interpreted by the State Committee on the Press and passed down to the publishers it managed (including Politizdat), was the need for positive examples in order to form a Marxist-Leninist worldview in the Soviet population. GARF, f. 9604, op. 1, d. 7,1.1 (prikaz of committee, February 15,1964).

25. RGALI, f. 2464, op. 3, d. 155 (Moscow Writers’ Union secretariat meeting to discuss the series, November 18,1964). The records of the Politizdat party organization meeting held April 23,1963, mentions At the Sourcesas an example of already working with “masters of the pen.” TsAOPIM, f. 819, op. 1, d. 32,11. 28-32. The meeting of the party bureau in January 1963, several months before the plenum, also discussed work with writers and this project as showing that “each [writer] doesn't want to be directed.” TsAOPIM, f. 819, op. 1, d. 33,11. 4-5.

26. According to available archive records, Politizdat did not seriously address issues of language until 1957, with a general meeting about the style of “mass-political brochures“ on November 15,1957 (RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 193); and then a 1960 general meeting about the language of economic publications (RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 230); before a meeting on November 27,1963, arising out of the CC plenum, that for the first time systematically analyzed the language, style, and “literary form” of all Politizdat's publications (RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 284). Thereafter, main editorial board and party organization meetings about language and style happened at least annually. See, e.g., TsAOPIM, f. 819, op. 1, dd. 32,33; and RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 287,11.1-11. Other records of discussions of serosf include RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 299,1.18; and of shablon, TsAOPIM, f. 819, op. 1, d. 35,11. 91,125-26 (party bureau summing up of year's activities in November 1965).

27. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 290, 1. 51 (stenogram of Politizdat's history section, June 4,1964); RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 288,1. 6. Tropkin first made this point about flabbily storming the heavens in the first meeting about language in late 1957. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 193.

28. For citations of Lenin and Gor'kii's prescriptions to pay attention to propaganda's form and content, see, e.g., TsAOPIM, f. 819, op. 1, d. 35,1.127; and RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 285,1.64 (main editorial meeting, January 16,1964).

29. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 289,1. 3 (general meeting about the thematic plan, May 1964). On Politizdat's emphatically “mass,” rather than scholarly or specialized, orientation, see, e.g., RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 288; TsAOPIM, f. 819, op. 1, d. 32; and RGALI, f. 2464, op. 3, d. 141,11. 78-79. The turn to reader tastes was part of a wider (if limited) trend in the mid- to late 1960s of investigating the tastes of the Soviet population, linked to the rehabilitation of sociology and the Kosygin reforms in the early Brezhnev era and much discussed in, for example, Soviet journalism and the Soviet film industry. See, e.g., Huxtable, Simon, ‘“A Compass in the Sea of Life': Soviet Journalism, the Public and the Limits of Reform after Stalin, 1953-1968” (PhD diss., University of London, 2013);Google Scholar and First, Joshua, “From Spectator to ‘Differentiated Consumer': Film Audience Research in the Era of Developed Socialism, 1965-80,” Kritika 9, no. 2 (2008): 317–44.Google Scholar These discussions at Politizdat did not cite scientific data about reader preferences, but they reflected a similar general awareness of the differentiated and discerning Soviet audience. 30. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 287,11. 32, 63 (main editorial board meeting, March 12, 1964).

31. TsAOPIM, f. 819, op. 1, d. 32,11.1-26. Contestations of this point of view included concern expressed at a 1963 partbiuromeeting that chasing enormous print runs and reader numbers—and therefore economic profitability—would mean the loss of “political profitability” and “cheapening” of Politizdat's ideological agenda (TsAOPIM, f. 819, op. 1, d. 33,1. 21), and resistance at a January 1964 editorial board meeting to idea that Politizdat should only cultivate good literary taste, with Marxism-Leninism being claimed to be equally important (RGASPI, 623, op. 1, d. 285,1.17).

32. On the need for language to become more literary to boost publications’ mass appeal, see, e.g., TsAOPIM, f. 819, op. 1, d. 32,11.28, 43 (1963 party organization meetings either side of the CC plenum). However, a main editorial board discussion very early in the history of the series, in April 1964, discussed and criticized the mass popularity of detective stories. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 288,11. 43, 89.

33. The point about the emotional effect on the reader and the need to “grip” them with compelling narratives was frequently made. See, e.g., TsAOPIM, f. 819, op. 1, d. 32, 1.26; RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 285; and GARF, f. 9604, op. 2, d. 365,11.24-26. There was some resistance to this view of reading, however, with some participants insisting that “readers must then move on to more serious, academic books to deepen their understanding of party history.” TsAOPIM, f. 819, op. 1, d. 35,1.102 (party meeting, 1965).

34. TsAOPIM, f. 819, op. 1, d. 35, 11. 127, 129; RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 305, 1. 4 (general meeting at Politizdat about language and style, July 1965); and RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 285,1. 23.

35. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 287,11. 5-6; TsAOPIM, f. 819, op. 1, d. 32; TsAOPIM, f. 819, op. 1, d. 33, 11. 13-23 (much discussion of profit and loss); and TsAOPIM, f. 819, op. 1, d. 35,1. 92.

36. GARF, f. 9604, op. 2, d. 365,11. 24-26. This notion of “betting” on writers to improve the quality and popularity of political literature emerged very early in the process. See RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 285,1.16.

37. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 288,11. 7,10, 24, 22.

38. RGALI, f. 2464, op. 3, d. 155,1. 4 (relations described as remarkably smooth and harmonious).

39. Ibid., 1.55. Compare this with Maiurov's more cautious view, in April of the same year, that the “ice” had only just started to “break up.” RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 288,1.76.

40. RGALI, f. 2464, op. 3, d. 155,1. 39.

41. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 299,1.23; RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 306 (main editorial board meeting, August 26,1965).

42. RGALI, f. 2464, op. 3, d. 155,1.15. These anxieties about the compatibility of Politizdat and literature had been expressed by more junior participants from a very early stage in the collaboration. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 295.

43. RGASPI, 623, op. 1, d. 365,1. 26. Compare the statement a year earlier, at the time of the initial formalization of writer relations, that “we need to make a bet on writers of the first rank, so that our little books make their way to the people [narod].”RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 285,1.16.

44. Zubok, , Zhivago's Children, 259-96; Boris Kagarlitsky, The Thinking Reed: Intellectuals and the Soviet State from 1917 to the Present(London, 1988), 189–201;Google Scholar and Shlapentokh, Vladimir, Soviet Intellectuals and Political Power: The Post-Stalin Era(Princeton, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45. On the “uses of biography” and the “juggling” required of the biographer, see France, Peter and Clair, William St., Mapping Lives: The Uses of Biography(Oxford, 2002);Google Scholar and Flexner, James, “Biography as a Juggler's Art,” in Clifford, James L., ed., Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism, 1560-1960(Oxford, 1962), 178–84Google Scholar, respectively. Analyses that view the artistic-documentary hybridity of biography in more positive, flexible terms include two major studies of Russian biographical writing: Lotman, Iurii, “Biografiia— zhivoe litso,” Novyi mir, 1985, no. 2: 228–36;Google Scholar and Ginzburg, Lidiia, On Psychological Prose (Princeton, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the rise of biography in Soviet culture of the 1920s and 1930s and the codification of a heroic, hagiographic model, see Brintlinger, Angela, Writing a Usable Past: Russian Literary Culture, 1917-37(Evanston, 2000);Google Scholar Brown, Edward, The Proletarian Episode in Russian Literature(New York, 1953);Google Scholar Clark, Katerina, “Little Heroes and Big Deeds: Literature Responds to the First Five-Year Plan,” in Fitzpatrick, Sheila, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931(Bloomington, 1978), 189–206;Google Scholar Brandenberger, David, “Stalin as Symbol: A Case Study of the Cult of Personality and Its Construction,” in Davies, Sarah and Harris, James, eds., Stalin: A New History(Cambridge, Eng., 2005);Google Scholar Brandenberger, David, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931-1956(Cambridge, Mass., 2002);Google Scholar and Mathewson, Rufus, The Positive Hero in Russian Literature(Stanford, 1978).Google Scholar

46. Kozlov, Denis, “The Historical Turn in Late Soviet Culture: Retrospectivism, Factography, Doubt, 1953-1991,” Kritika 2, no. 3 (Summer 2001): 577–600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The Lives of Remarkable People series was initially cited as a model for the series. See, e.g., RGALI, f. 2464, op. 3, d. 155,11.15, 34, one of the first meetings about the series, at which it was even provisionally titled “The Lives of Remarkable Revolutionaries” and said to be very similar to Lives of Remarkable People. But soon thereafter, as the problem of “duplication“ started to be raised, the editorial board increasingly emphasized the differences between the two: Fiery Revolutionaries’ much greater focus on revolutionaries (only a secondary, minor line in the Lives of Remarkable People series) and its more creative, aesthetically sophisticated approach to biographical narrative. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 293,1.34 (main editorial board meeting, October 16,1964); RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 299,11.31,59 (main editorial board meeting, February 17,1965); RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 313,11.101-5 (main editorial board meeting, April 28,1966); and RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 333,1.34.

47. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 288,11.65, 70-71,77; RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 299,11.61, 78. Figures on the exceptionally eclectic first list (the second was created in 1970) included Nikolai Bauman, Feliks Dzerzhinskii, Nadezhda Krupskaia, Simon Bolivar, Jean-Paul Marat, Maximilien Robespierre, and Aleksandr Herzen.

48. Edel, Leon, Writing Lives: Principia Biographica(New York, 1984), 211.Google Scholar

49. There were, for example, calls for a definition of the “balance” and “proportion“ of fact to imagination to be defined and set (and, according to several participants, minimized) before party-state approval of the project. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 295 (main editorial board meeting, December 29,1964).

50. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 304,11. 19-22, 53-54, 57 (main editorial board meeting about quality of literature, April 29,1965).

51. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 309,11. 35-36, 88, 91 (main editorial board meeting, December 16,1965).

52. Ibid., 11. 86, 78.

53. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 295,1. 27 and passim (main editorial board meeting December 29, 1964) for colleagues’ anxieties about domysel; RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 296, 1.118 (general Politizdat meeting, January 8-11,1965).

54. On deadline pressure for the fiftieth anniversary celebrations, see, e.g., TsAOPIM, f. 819, op. 1, d. 37, 11. 129-51 (party bureau meeting, June 7, 1966); GARF, f. 9604, op. 2, d. 365,11. 7-10, 23 (State Committee on Press protocol, February 15, 1965); and RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 312,11. 92-154 (general Politizdat meeting, February 10,1966).

55. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 312,1.89 and passim.

56. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, dd. 312, 313 (editorial board meeting of April 28, 1966, at which multiple speakers criticized the use of “fantasy” and claimed that Iurii Tynianov, whom Davydov cited as a key model for the series, had imagined too much in his biographies of the 1920s [see, e.g., RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 312,1.124]).

57. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, dd. 309 (main editorial meeting, December 16, 1965), 312, and 313, esp. 11.101-6.

58. On “scolding,” see RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 312,1.137; on claims of “freedom” to invent, see RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 313,1.102; and on earlier claims that writers “are allowed to write” in imaginative ways, see RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 304,1.41.

59. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 304,11. 55-57; RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 309; and RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 313,1.157.

60. On the “compendium“-style biography, see, e.g., Edel, Writing Lives, 49, 94-107; on borrowing novelistic and other literary techniques, see ibid., 14-17, 175-85, 203-5, 213; Madelenat, Daniel, La Biographie(Paris, 1984), 167–86;Google Scholar France, and Clair, St., Mapping Lives, 16–17;Google Scholar Novarr, David, The Lines of Life: Theories of Biography, 1880-1970(West Lafayette, 1986), 145;Google Scholar and Clifford, , Biography as an Art, 162–75.Google Scholar

61. See, e.g., RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 299,1. 31 (including Davydov's claim that the books must have a “plot spring“).

62. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 305,11.1-26. For earlier criticisms, in 1964, of the “necrologue“ and unstructured “chronicle” types of biography, see RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 285,1.24.

63. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 299,1. 31; RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 313, 11. 102, 136; and RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 313,1.146.

64. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 313,1.134 and passim. At a meeting the previous year, the management proposed Viktor Shklovskii's and Leonid Grossman's literary biographies as examples of texts with more than one “plotline.” RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 299,1. 52.

65. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 313,11.136,139,145,180.

66. Boldyrev, S. N., Trizhdy prigovorennyi…: Povest’ o Georgii Dimitrove(Moscow, 1968).Google Scholar

67. On the conflicting imperatives to produce works of quality, on the one hand, and to keep to tight deadlines, on the other, see TsAOPIM, f. 819, op. 1, d. 37 (a mid-1966 party organization discussion of fiftieth-anniversary publications featured promises that there would be several books out for the anniversary but also calls to wait until an excellent biography of a prominent figure was ready). On the problem of the right order of biographies, see, e.g., RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 309,11. 7-9 (Davydov's explanation of how the need to negotiate with authors led to departures from list); and RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 312,1.137. At a main editorial board meeting on October 24,1967, Davydov referred to a press committee meeting at which the committee agreed not to keep to the strict sequence of the list but to prioritize bringing out good books as soon as they were ready. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 329,1.43. This was, however, the opposite of what happened with Boldyrev's book.

68. Shemetov, A. I., Val'dshnepy nad tiur'moi: Povest’ o Nikolae Fedoseeve(Moscow, 1968).Google Scholar Shemetov's manuscript was discussed at the same meeting, and its reception there was notably warmer, with much more praise for its literary qualities. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 327 (main editorial board discussion of Shemetov and Boldyrev, June 13-14,1967).

69. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 293,11. 28-30; RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 306,1. 57.

70. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 327,1. 74.

71. Ibid., 11.10,78.

72. Ibid., 11. 5-6, 9, 26, 78.

73. Ibid., 11.25, 9.

74. Ibid., 1.11.

75. Ibid., 11.11, 27.

76. Ibid., 11.11,13.

77. Ibid., 1. 26.

78. Ibid., 11. 44, 85, 47.

79. Ibid., 1. 48.

80. Mathewson, Positive Hero;Clark, Soviet Novel.

81. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 327,11. 67, 64.

82. Ibid., 11. 37-41.

83. Ibid., 11. 55-56.

84. Ibid., 11. 82-83.

85. Ibid., 11. 91-92.

86. Ibid., 1. 94.

87. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 329,11.15, 32; RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 332,11. 6-7 (main editorial board meeting, February 13,1968).

88. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 329,1. 30.

89. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 333,1. 34.

90. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, dd. 346 (main editorial board meeting, March 5,1970), 348 (main editorial board meeting, April 16,1970).

91. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 346,11.12-15.

92. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 348,1. 32.

93. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 346,11. 5-7.

94. Ibid., 11. 29, 42 (Boldyrev); ibid., 1. 25 (criticism of Lev Slavin, Za nashu i vashu svobodu! Povest’ o Iaroslave Dombrovskom[Moscow, 1968]).

95. Ibid., 11.25, 53.

96. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 346.

97. Ibid., 1.45.

98. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 352,11.3-5 (writers’ council meeting about series, November 27,1970).

99. Ibid., 1.8.

100. Ibid., 11. 24, 45.

101. Ibid., 11. 25,12,18.

102. Ibid., 1. 65.

103. Ibid., 1.36.

104. Lotman, “Biografiia,” 74; RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 352,1. 65.

105. Okudzhava, Bulat, Glotok svobody(Moscow, 1971).Google Scholar

106. In its first published version, the story paid eponymous tribute to this narrator. Okudzhava, B., “Bednyi Avrosimov,” Druzhba narodov, 1969, no. 4:107–42Google Scholar; no. 5:133-98; and no. 6:103-68.

107. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 352,11. 51-89.

108. See, e.g., Zubok, , Zhivago's Children, 289–300;Google Scholar Kagarlitsky, , Thinking Reed, 201–3;Google Scholar Kagarlitsky, Boris, “1960s East and West: The Nature of the Shestidesiatnikiand the New Left,” boundary 2 36, no. 1 (2009): 95–104;CrossRefGoogle Scholar English, Russia and the Idea of the West;and Markwick, “Catalyst.“

109. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 333,1. 34.

110. TsAOPIM, f. 819, op. 1, d. 39,11.17-23,32 (July and August 1968 meetings of party organization about intensifying ideological struggle and counterpropaganda); TsAOPIM, f. 819, op. 1, d. 40,11.5-24 (party organization discussion of CC resolution on heightening ideological controls on publications). On this ideological turn, see also, e.g., Heirs, Rothberg of Stalin, 213-20,236; Georgi Arbatov, The System: An Insider's Life in Soviet Politics (New York, 1992), 137–60;Google Scholar and Hollander, , Soviet Political Indoctrination, 192–96.Google Scholar

111. TsAOPIM, f. 819, op. 1, d. 40,1. 76; TsAOPIM, f. 819, op. 1, d. 41,11.114-19 (party organization discussions in 1969 and 1970, respectively, of CC takeover of publisher and of CC resolution on improving efficacy of political propaganda). Earlier, in 1967, there had been a similar CC resolution on the efficacy and quality of propaganda and political literature which had similarly coincided with trends toward greater ideological strictness (e.g., an October 1966 CC ideological gathering [GARF, f. 9604, op. 2, d. 818,11. 26-27]). GARF, f. 9604, op. 1, d. 21,11.108-11 (discussion of these CC resolutions in the State Committee on the Press in May 1967 and July 1967, respectively, which at that time was still in charge of Politizdat). Remington, C.f., Truth of Authority, 3–28 Google Scholar, on these competing objectives and similar resolutions in the late 1970s.

112. RGASPI, f. 623, op. 1, d. 352.

113. Remington, Truth of Authority, 5. Emphasis added.

115. Yurchak, by contrast, presents living “outside” ideology as a problem of which the leadership was largely unaware. Yurchak, Everything Was Forever.

114. One study of the creation of the 1917 myth in the first decade after the revolution traces, by contrast, how long it took for the myth and master narrative to be consolidated. By the late 1960s, the problem was the opposite: how to revitalize a codified narrative of an increasingly distant event. Corney, Frederick, Telling October: Memory and the Making of the Bolshevik Revolution(Ithaca, 2004).Google Scholar

116. Kotkin, Stephen, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization(Berkeley, 1997).Google Scholar Fitzpatrick, in “Culture and Politics,” makes a similar argument about the Stalin era, claiming that the leadership was absorbing the values of the intelligentsia as much as the intelligentsia were absorbing theirs.

117. Oushakine, Serguei, “The Terrifying Mimicry of Samizdat,” Public Culture 13, no. 2 (2001): 191–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

118. This is clear from the many episodes of interference by the main editors in texts of the later 1970s and 1980s which they worried were too critical of revolutionary ideals. Novokhatko, “Belye Vorony.” Benjamin Nathans argues that an important aim of dissidence in the late 1960s was to expose the hypocrisy and superficiality of similar talk of rights by Soviet officials. Nathans, Benjamin, “The Dictatorship of Reason: Aleksandr Vol'pin and the Idea of Rights under ‘Developed Socialism,'” Slavic Review 66, no. 4 (Winter 2007): 630–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

119. Aksenov, Vasilii, Liubov’ k elektrichestvu: Povest’ o Leonide Krasine(Moscow, 1971); Vladimir Voinovich, Steperi doveriia: Povest’ o Vere Figner(Moscow, 1972).Google Scholar

120. Clark, Katerina, “Changing Historical Paradigms in Soviet Culture,” in Lahusen, Thomas and Kuperman, Gene, eds., Late Soviet Culture: From Perestroika to Novostroika (Durham, 1993), 289–306;Google Scholar Trigos, Ludmilla, The Decembrist Myth in Russian Culture(New York, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Compare Kozlov, “Historical Turn,” on the spectrum of historical interests and approaches across late socialist society and across “official” and “unofficial” texts.

121. Aksenov, , Liubov’ k elektrichestvu;Okudzhava, Glotok svobody;and Iurii Trifonov, Neterpenie(Moscow, 1973).Google Scholar