Sintaksis

“Sintaksis”, cover n° 1, 1978.

Title of the journal:
“Sintaksis” [Syntax]

Dates: 1978-2001

Place of publication: Paris

Editors: Andrei Siniavskii (until n. 10, 1982), Mariia Rozanova

Principal collaborators: Aleksandr Esenin-Vol’pin, Efim Ėtkind, Igor’ Golomshtok, Dina Kaminskaia, Pavel Litvinov, Igor’ Pomerantsev, Kirill Pomerantsev, Mariia Rozanova, Andrei Siniavskii (Abram Terts), Tomas Ventslova, Iuliia Vishnevskaia, Zinovii Zinik.

Total numbers: 37

Description:
The magazine “Sintaksis” takes its name from the homonymous poetic almanac published in Moscow in samizdat from 1959 to 1960 (3 issues) edited by Aleksandr Ginzburg. The first four issues of the magazine published in Paris and edited by Andrei Siniavskii and Mariia Rozanova from 1978 were dedicated to Ginzburg who had been sentenced to eight years’ hard labour because of his activism in the defence of human rights as part of the Moscow “Helsinki Group”. In his honour, the first tamizdat issue of “Sintaksis” contained a section entitled V zashchitu Aleksandra Ginzburga (In Defence of Aleksandr Ginzburg) which presented two articles, one by Siniavskii  – “Tëmnaia noch’…” (“The Dark Night…”), and the other by Iulii Daniėl’ – Vyshe drugikh (Superior to Others). In the second issue, Siniavskii’s editorial harshly criticised the sentence imposed on his dissident friend by the Soviet justice system. Their roles had been reversed because in 1967, at the time of the trial of Siniavskii and Daniėl’ (1965-1966) who had been accused of anti-Soviet propaganda for having published their works abroad under the pseudonyms of Abram Terts and Nikolai Arzhak, it was Ginzburg who collected and published the stenograms and other materials relating to the trial in the volume Belaia kniga po delu A. Siniavskogo i Iu. Daniėlia (The White Book on the A. Siniavskii and Iu. Daniėl’ case), a publication that cost him his second arrest.
“Sintaksis” was published in Paris from 1978 to 1992, almost every three months (issues 1-33). In 1993 publication was interrupted and resumed the following year with three more issues in the two-year period 1994-1995 (nos. 34-36), the last of which was a special issue dedicated to the memory of Siniavskii (no. 36, 1995). The last issue (no. 37) was published in 2001. The editors were Siniavskii and Rozanova until issue no. 10 (1982), but for all subsequent issues the magazine was edited by Rozanova alone.
From the very first issue, the magazine appeared with the subtitle Publitsistika, Kritika, Polemika (Current Affairs, Criticism, Controversy), an assertion of copyright and the statement that “the opinion of the authors does not always correspond to that of the editors”. From 1979 (issue 5), a list of the magazine’s supporters – the “League of supporters” – was published on the second page, varying slightly from issue to issue, but including the names of Aleksandr Esenin-Vol’pin, Aleksandr Piatigorskii, Igor’ Golomshtok, Dina Kaminskaia, Efim Ėtkind, Vasilii Aksënov and Tat’iana Tolstaia.
“Sintaksis” published poems, short stories and numerous articles devoted to literary criticism, philosophy, politics and religion. The headings varied from issue to issue, but two sections were always present: Sovremennye problemy (Contemporary Problems) and Literatura i iskusstvo (Literature and Art). Interaction with other samizdat and tamizdat journals is clearly evident in the pages of “Sintaksis”, attested for example in the publication of reviews that first appeared in the Leningrad journal “37” by Viktor Krivulin (no. 9), or in the debates with the tamizdat journal “Kontinent” by Vladimir Maksimov (no. 11, 37). Many of the contributions were written by Rozanova and Siniavskii – who often used the pseudonym Terts – and whose pieces were published in almost every issue, even in those published after his death. The most frequent contributors, most of whom were political dissidents of the Soviet regime, included some of the most prominent exponents of the defence of human rights – such as Iuliia Vyshnevskaia and Dina Kaminskaia – and art historians, literary critics, journalists and Russian writers who had emigrated abroad – such as Golomshtok, Zinik, Ėtkind, Igor’ Pomerantsev and Boris Grois. The magazine sometimes featured papers presented at conferences of Russian emigration writers (no. 10). Of particular importance is the controversy between Siniavskij and other contributors to the journal and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (nos. 13, 14, 31, 37, cf. Denisenko 2010: 11-12; 2016: 91-94).

Notes: The print run of the magazine is never indicated and each issue had a variable number of pages, between 200 and 250. Digitised copies are available on the site of the Nekommercheskaia Elektronnaia Biblioteka “ImWerden” https://imwerden.de/razdel-2000-str-1.html (last accessed: 30/06/2021). The catalogue of “Sintaksis” can be consulted in the catalogue of Russian emigration magazines (svobodnyi katalog periodiki russkogo zarubezh’ia) edited by the “Emigrantika” site available at: http://www.emigrantica.ru/item/sintaksis-parizh-1978-1994 (last accessed: 30/06/2021).

Ilaria Sicari
 [30th June 2021]

Translation by Iris Karafillidis

Bibliography

• Denisenko A., Zhurnal “Sintaksis” v kontekste zhurnalistiki russkogo zarubezh’ia, dissertatsiia kandidata filologicheskikh nauk, Rossiiskij universitet druzhby narodov, Moskva 2010.
• A. Denisenko, Polemika s A. I. Solzhenicynym na stranitsakh zhurnala “Sintaksis”, “Vestnik RYDN”, seriia “Literaturovedenie. Zhurnalistika”, 1 (2016): 91-95, https://cyberleninka.ru/article/v/polemika-s-a-i-solzhenitsynym-na-stranitsah-zhurnala-sintaksis, online (last accessed: 30/06/2021).
• V. Kazak, Leksikon russkoi literature XX veka, RIK “Kul’tura”, Moskva 1996: 381-382, http://books.e-heritage.ru/book/10082583, online (last accessed: 30/06/2021).