Kontinent

Cover of the quarterly literary magazine “Kontinent”, 1974.

Title of the journal:
“Kontinent” [Continent]

Years: 1974–2013

Places: Paris (1974–1992), Moscow (1992–2013)

Editors: Vladimir Maksimov (1974 – 1992), Igor’ Vinogradov (1992–2013)

Number of magazine issues: 154

Contributors: Igor’ Golomshtok, Natal’ia Gorbanevskaia, Andrei Siniavskii, Viktor Nekrasov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, Robert Conquest, Richard Pipes, Iosif Brodskii, Vladimir Maramzin, Czesław Miłosz, Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, Ignazio Silone, Eugène Ionesco, Vladimir Voinovich, Milovan Đilas, Vladimir Bukovskii, Tat’iana Goricheva, Heinrich Böll e and many others

Description:
Founded by the writer Vladimir Maksimov, who had been sent to a psykhushka because of his novels and forced to emigrate in 1974 (cf. Heller 1991: 871), the quarterly magazine Kontinent was one of the most ambitious publishing projects of the “Second Culture”. It published over one hundred and fifty issues in less than forty years, and boasted a long list of famous collaborators, including the Nobel laureates Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Iosif Brodskii, Andrei Sakharov and Czesław Miłosz, as well as Eugène Ionesco, Vladimir Voinovich, and Robert Conquest.
The editorial line of the magazine was clear from the very first issues, characterized by a detailed and reasoned criticism of the Soviet system. Not surprisingly, “Kontinent” was considered an incredibly dangerous publication in the USSR  (cf. Skarlygina 2008: web), although issues were available to the inner circle of executives in the spetskhrany (abbreviation of Spetsial’nye khranilishcha, “Special collections”) of several libraries (cf. ibid.). Several sections of the magazine were dedicated to current affairs and historical-political essays: especially worth remembering are Facts and evidence, Religion in our life, Russia and actuality, Dialogue of Eastern Europe, in which articles were written by Andrei Sakharov, Aleksandr Nekrich and other authors excluded from public debate within the Soviet Union.
No less relevant was the literary section of the magazine: among the many works that appeared in “Kontinent” were chapters of Moskva 2042 (Moscow 2042) by Vladimir Voinovich and of Zhizn’ i sud’ba (Life and Fate) by Vasilii Grossman, as well as Fazil’ Iskander’s and Vasilii Aksenov’s short stories (cf. ibid.), and Iurii Dombrovskii’s prose.
The magazine’s contributors did not always share points of view.  Andrei Siniavskii’s was the author of an essay entitled Literaturnyi protsess v Rossii (The literary process in Russia, 1, 1974), in which he expressed an unorthodox opinion in contrast with the Weltanschauung of another eminent contributor, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (cf. Sabbatini-Cornettone 2015: 316); this was one of the first signs of an and imminent and irreparable split within the Russian diaspora of those years. The disagreements, which were also of a personal nature, prompted Siniavskii to abandon “Kontinent” and start, with his wife Mariia Rozanova’s, the magazine “Sintaksis” (1978-2001), a counterpart to “Kontinent” due to the central role given to the influence of Western culture. Solzhenitsyn himself was not always entirely at ease with the line taken by “Kontinent”; while respecting its importance, he saw it as a mouthpiece for the “third Russian emigration” (cf. Skarlygina 2008: web; Guagnelli 2011: web), and criticised what he considered to be its excessive Western point of view. The author of Arkhipelag Gulag (The Gulag Archipelago) felt closer to the periodical directed by Nikita Struve, “Vestnik RKhD” (Messenger of the Russian Christian movement; cf. ibid.).
“Kontinent”s ability to attract such a wide range of contributors, from Russian and Western culture, was also due to the payments it offered its writers, which were significantly higher than for other tamizdat magazines: the funding of the first two issues was provided by Solzhenitsyn himself, while from the third issue the magazine was subsidized by the famous German publisher and patron Axel Springer until his death in 1989 (cf. Skarlygina 2008: web).
Interestingly “Kontinent”’s had a wide international circulation: in addition to its permanent channels of distribution in the USA, Germany, England and Israel, at the beginning of 1977, the Russian edition was translated into eight languages: English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Japanese, Greek and Italian (cf. Skarlygina 2008: web). One of Maksimov’s purposes was to establish a partnership between Russian emigration circles and the most influential Western circles, in order to convey the real conditions of life in the Soviet Union  (cf. Ciottoli 2016: 62). The magazine often cooperated with similar publications that had emerged abroad, both in Russian (the magazine “Russkaja mysl’”), and other languages (such as the Polish periodical “Kultura”).
From 1992, “Kontinent’”s editorial staff relocated from Paris to Moscow, affirming the magazine’s focus on Russia, its history and its culture.

Federico Iocca
[30th June 2021]

Translation by Alice Bucelli

Bibliography

• Ciottoli M., Il dissenso sovietico: uno studio sulla ricezione in Italia tramite il caso della rivista russa Kontinent, Master’s Degree Thesis, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Florence 2015/2016.
• Guagnelli S., “Kontinent”, Tra memoria e utopia: il samizdat come simbolo della cultura europea, 2011, http://www.maldura.unipd.it/samizdat/tamizdat/russia/riviste/kontinent.htm, online (last accessed: 30/06/2021).
• Heller M., Vladimir Maksimov (nato nel 1932), in E. Etkind, G. Nivat, I. Serman, V. Strada (eds.), Storia della letteratura russa: III. Il Novecento: 3. Dal realismo socialista ai nostri giorni, Einaudi, Torino 1991: 871-875.
• Sabbatini M., Cornettone N., Russofobia e nichilismo nazionale nel dibattito intellettuale russo di fine Novecento, “Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale”, 49 (September 2015): 309-332.
• Skarlygina E., Russkaia Ėmigratsiia XX veka i traditsiia russkogo tolstogo literaturno-khudozhestvennogo zhurnala, “Mediaskop”, 1 (2008): http://www.mediascope.ru/русская-эмиграция-хх-века-и-традиция-русского-«толстого»-литературно-художественного-журнала, online (last accessed: 30/06/2021).