Krug (B. Ivanov – Iu. Novikov)

Cover of “Krug”, 1985.

Title:
Krug [The circle]

Date of publication: 1985

Place of publication: Leningrad

Curators: Boris Ivanov, Iurii Novikov

Preface: Iurii Andreev

Number of pages: 312

Circulation: 10,000 copies

Description:
Krug (The Circle) constitutes the only official collective volume produced by authors belonging to the ‘Second Culture’ (cf. Dolinin 2003: 415). Consisting of verse and short prose, the anthology brings together the works of thirty-four authors united by a desire to avoid the limitations of Socialist Realism and produce a printed record of their “aspiration to research and experimentalism”, as stated in the short preface (Andreev 1985: 3). The publication was the fruit of the activity of Klub-81, a literary circle born at the beginning of the 1980s which attracted writers with common goals. On the one hand, they wanted to protect the underground culture from the incipient process of internal dissolution, caused also by the forced emigration of many of its representatives and on the other, they wanted to combat the circumscription and control of non-conformist cultural activities on the part of the authorities seeking to put an end to the widespread diffusion of samizdat editions (cf. ibid.: 291 ff.). Among the many writers who refused to take part in the project were Vladimir Ėrl’, Tamara Bukovskaia and Evgenii Venzel’ (cf. ibid.: 293).
The curator of this sui generis literary circle, which was connected to the journal “Chasy”, was Iurii Andreev, a scholar of Soviet literature and representative of the Leningrad section of the Union of Writers. Renamed ‘Andropych’ by many, in ‘honour’ of the then KGB president Iurii Andropov (cf. ibid.), Andreev was also chosen as editor of the Krug anthology.
The idea of an volume collecting for the first time authors who had been excluded from official channels originated in 1982 (cf. Dolinin 2003: 415). Less than a year later, the materials of the anthology were ready to be delivered to the Leningrad-based publisher Sovetskii pisatel’. However, numerous cuts, omissions, and reconsiderations postponed the publication until 1985 after a process involving as many as nine levels of censorship. (cf. ibid.). Despite the rather aseptic preface and the elimination of the sections dedicated to memoirs, to the figurative works of Leningrad artists and to criticism (which included Elena Ignatova’s essay Soblaznii poshlosti, The Temptations of Triviality, dedicated to the poetry of Andrei Voznesenskii), the few printed copies of the anthology sold rapidly, triggering a heated debate characterised by criticism and controversy (cf. Sabbatini 2003: 298). The proposal to publish a second edition which would have compensated for the shortcomings of the first rather restrained version, was refused by the publisher (cf. Dolinin 2003: 415).

Federico Iocca
[30th June 2021]

Translation by Marta Capossela

Bibliography

• Andreev Iu., Krug poiskov. Vstupitel’naia stat’ia, in Krug. Literaturno-khudozhestvennyi sbornik, Sovetskii pisatel’, Leningrad 1985: 3-4.
• Dolinin V., Ivanov B., Ostanin B., Severiukhin, D. (eds.), Samizdat Leningrada. Literaturnaia ėntsiklopediia, Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, Moskva 2003.
• Sabbatini M., “Quel che si metteva in rima”: cultura e poesia underground a Leningrado, Collana di Europa Orientalis, Salerno 2008.