copyright

[Michael Newcity]

Giampaolo,

The issue of copyright protection and payment of royalties for the works of
Lev Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov is even more convoluted than the previous
messages suggest.  Soon after the Revolution, the Bolshevik government began
nationalizing  (to take "from the sphere of private property to the sphere
of the community").  Over the next few years decrees were issued
nationalizing the works of dozens of Russian composers and writers.  A
decree dated January 18, 1923 nationalized the works of 47 Russian writers,
including Gogol, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Chekhov.  Under
the 1918 legislation that authorized the nationalization of such works, once
the authors died, their heirs were not entitled to receive royalties for the
use of these works.  So, in Russia, the heirs of Tolstoy and Chekhov almost
certainly stopped receiving royalties soon after the Revolution.

These heirs--at least those who lived abroad--may have continued to receive
royalties from publishers in other countries under existing publishing
agreements or with respect to works that were first published in those other
countries. But inasmuch as Russia after August 1, 1918 did not extend
copyright protection to the works of foreign authors, under the prevalent
international principle of reciprocity foreign (non-Russian) publishers
would have been free to re-publish the works of Tolstoy and Chekhov first
published in Russia without payment of any royalties.

Regards,
Michael Newcity

 
Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies
Duke University
Box 90260
Room 303, Languages Building
Durham, NC  27708-0260
Tel: 919-660-3150
Fax: 919-660-3188

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