Reading Habits of Samizdat Activists - Call for Volunteer Researchers

[Josephine von Zitzewitz]

Call for Volunteer Researchers

*
*

*Reading Habits and Dissent during the Period of Stagnation in the Soviet
Union, 1960s-1980s*, a joint research project of Oxford University and the
“Memorial” Society in Moscow, is inviting volunteer contributors.

We are researching the impact of reading habits on late Soviet dissent.
Apart from being prolific writers, dissenting intellectuals were experts in
proliferating texts they considered important. The majority of samizdat
(i.e. self-published) texts were reproductions, often translations, of
texts that were unavailable to the general readership. We aim to establish
which literary, philosophical and theological texts were popular among
dissenters/samizdat authors.

While many of the samizdat authors’ own texts have been collated,
republished, and researched, reconstructing what these people read is
infinitely more difficult. There are no convenient catalogues telling us
which texts they studied or where the texts came from. Instead, we have to
piece together this information from multiple disparate  sources: surviving
samizdat journals, archives, memoirs and academic studies.

This is where you can help. We are looking for motivated individuals (good
reading knowledge of Russian essential) who like to read memoirs or work
with oral history sources, and/or are interested in
bibliographical/archival research, and/or would like to develop their own
approach for participating in what we hope to turn into a larger,
multi-agency project.


For more information please visit

http://www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/russian/reading-dissent/

or

http://www.memo.ru/d/167195.html

<http://www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/russian/reading-dissent/>



or contact one of the researchers:

Josie von Zitzewitz (Oxford): Josephine.vonzitzewitz at new.ox.ac.uk
Gennady Kuzovkin (Moscow): memo.projects at gmail.com

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