MetrOpol’ (V. Aksënov, V. Erofeev)

Source: Culture del dissenso.

Title:
Metropol’ 

Date: 1979

Place of publication: Moscow

Promoters and editors: Vasilii Aksënov, Viktor Erofeev, Evgenii Popov, Andrei Bitov and Fazil’ Iskander

Description:
Published in Moscow in 1979,  Metropol’ was originally conceived by Vasilii Aksënov and Viktor Erofeev in 1978. Behind the project was Evgenii Popov who was joined by Andrei Bitov and Fazil’ Iskander. The intention was to publish aesthetically heterogeneous and unpublished literary texts in opposition to official culture which would otherwise have struggled to find a readership. The anthology presented itself as a mouthpiece for literature ‘of the underground’, although its contributors including Andrei Voznesenskii, Bella Akhmadulina, Vladimir Vysotskii and Genrikh Sapgir, who had written for “37”, belonged to very different generations, currents and groups (cf. Volkov 1998).
The collection was intended for publication without censorship.  An initial 12 copies with copyright were printed, and, according to a report in the “Chronicle of Current Events”, a presentation was organised on 23 January 1979 with Soviet and foreign press, and intellectual, literary and artistic figures such as Mikhail Leontovich, N. Engel’gardt, Veniamin Kaverin, Georgii Vladimov, Vladimir Kornilov, Bulat Okudzhava, Anatolii Efros and Iurii Liubimov. The promoters were confident that the work would be published by the official press and, to this end, made contact with the VAAP, the Goskomizdat and the Sovetskii pisatel’ publishing house. However, the initiative did not meet with the approval of the Soviet central committee or the KGB, and was condemned by the Moscow City Writers’ Union which summoned the five editors (although Aksënov did not turn up) and tried to convince them not to go ahead with promoting the work.
On January 22, a meeting of the Union’s secretariat was convened, which judged Metropol’ to be an “inadmissible work, devoid of ideas, of little artistic value, in contradiction with the practice of Soviet literature because of the way it was written and because of its ultimate character’” (Zalambani 2004: 249). The promoters cancelled the presentation but did not give up. On 23 January, Popov went to the café “Ritm” in Moscow, where the presentation would have taken place and found it closed ‘for disinfection’: the neighbourhood was surrounded by the KGB.
In the meantime, unbeknownst to the authors, Carl Proffer, director of the US publishing house Ardis, who had received a copy of the anthology, gave an interview to “Golos Ameriki” on 25 January 1979 and declared his intention to print it, informing the public of the existence of a second copy of the work, which was held by the French publisher Gallimard. The ‘Metropol’ case became international and was reported in Germany, the United States and Great Britain. In 1980, an article also appeared in the tamizdat magazine “Grani”. The editors were prevented from publishing in their homeland.
The collection went through several editions in 1991, 1999 and 2001. Popov’s desire was to create a complete archive, the files for which he gave – due to KGB searches and confiscations – to a friend, who is now deceased. Maria Zalambani reports that “when Popov asked for its return years later, he was told that the archive had never existed” (ibid.: 223).

Giuseppina Larocca
[30th June 2021]

Translation by Iris Karafillidis

Bibliography

• Volkov O., O “Metropole”, “Zvezda”, 8 (1998): 143-146.
• Zalambani M., Il caso Metropol’. Stenogramma della riunione allargata della segreteria dell’Unione degli Scrittori di Mosca del 22 gennaio 1979 (dall’archivio privato di Evgenij Popov), “Russica Romana”, XI (2004): 223-252.
• Zalambani M., Censura, istituzioni e politica letteraria in URSS (1964-1985), Firenze University Press, Firenze 2009.