A RETROSPECTIVE OF THIRTY YEARS OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE

WILLEM G. WESTSTEIJN

Introduction

After exactly 30 years of publication it seems to be a good time to make a retrospective evaluation of what Russian Literature has achieved. Therefore, this issue, being the last of the fiftieth volume, will contain complete author, subject and special issue indexes of all the issues published during the journals existence (1971–2001). The indexes are preceded by some introductory remarks about the history of the journal, its authors, its readership and its future editorial policy.

History

Russian Literature was founded by Jan van der Eng, who a few years before the first issue was published, had been appointed as professor of Russian literature at the Slavic Department of the University of Amsterdam. From the very beginning Van der Eng aimed at making his journal an international affair. As co-editor he invited Nils Åke Nilsson from the University of Stockholm; members of the Editorial Board were A. Flaker (Zagreb), J. Holthusen (Munich), A.M. Ripellino (Rome) and K.F. Taranovsky (Harvard). The journal was published by Mouton at the Hague, the publishing company that has done so much creditable work for Slavistics and has brought out so many well-designed books in this field.

Russian Literature aimed at being international and impartial. The editorial in the first issue declared firmly that Russian Literature should be ``a journal devoted to the whole range of Russian literature, from the earliest period to the present day. It does not favour any particular approach – biographical, historical, comparative, stylistic, or structural. It welcomes all methods and viewpoints, provided they contribute something new, original and challenging to our understanding of Russian literature. To these characteristics was added by way of precaution that the journal would appear irregularly: ``Issues will appear as soon as there is enough material.

Very soon there turned out to be quite a lot of material. Part of it came from the Soviet Union, where a group of brilliant young scholars, closely connected with the Moscow-Tartu school of structuralism and semiotics, was looking for possibilities to have their own works published. These scholars were especially engaged with the study of the Russian avant-garde (Achmatova, Mandelštam), a domain for the greater part forbidden for the official literary historical and literary theoretical journals, but a domain which was of paramount importance for the cultural typological approach of the Moscow-Tartu school. Thanks to his excellent personal relations with these unofficial or semi-official scholars Van der Eng collected in Russian Literature a large number of articles which lie at the basis of the study of the Russian historical avant-garde, especially Russian Acmeism. Already the second issue dealt almost entirely with Osip Mandelštam and included extensive articles by, amongst others, Ju.I. Levin and D.M. Segal. The double issues 7/8 (1974) and 10/11 (1975) were exclusively devoted to Acmeism. Apart from Russian scholars, scholars from the western countries contributed to No. 7/8, as, for instance Nilsson and Taranovsky, who were associated with the journal; No. 10/11 contained only material from the Soviet Union. It goes without saying that in those years, the seventies and the beginning of the eighties, Russian Literature, as a ``window to the West has been of great service to the Russian scholars.

No. 12 was the last issue which was published by Mouton. As a result of a number of ambitious and expensive projects the firm had got into financial difficulties and had been forced to put an end to almost all of their Slavic productions. Russian Literature was disposed of as well. The journal was taken over by North Holland Publishing Company at Amsterdam, part of Elsevier. The external appearance of Russian Literature, with its by now famous yellow cover, did not change, but the new publisher was not prepared to pay for the expensive printing costs and required a camera-ready typescript. On the other hand, it was agreed that Russian Literature would appear regularly, i.e. as a quarterly journal, each issue containing some 100 pages. The first issue of Vol. IV (No. 13) appeared in January 1976.

To prepare a decent looking camera-ready typescript was not an easy affair in those days. The editorial office acquired the latest thing in ``home printing: an electric golf ball IBM with exchangeable parts for Latin and Cyrillic and for both, of course, straight, italic and bold, 10 and 12 pitch; diagrams, arrows etc. had to be drawn by hand. In the beginning Loes Visser, but soon after her Anna Keesman (the latter is mentioned for the first time in the second issue of Vol. VI, 1978) used to take much trouble to produce faultless typescripts. They were assisted by Eric de Haard who, apart from correcting the original manuscripts and completing bibliographical data, relentlessly hounded every typographical error. Russian Literature has been very fortunate with its editorial assistants. Anna Keesman did the job until the end of 1989 (close to 10,000 pages!). In that year a computer was bought (an Apple Macintosh because of the smooth switching between the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets) and Gertruud Alleman took over. She is still connected with the journal and has exploited the computer-technological developments of the last decade to give Russian Literature an increasingly professional appearance. And Eric de Haard still guarantees an almost faultless printed text.

As the material received by Russian Literature was growing steadily the editors decided in 1979 to publish the journal in six instead of four yearly installments. Programming special issues, which in the first few years of the journals existence was more or less a matter of chance, from now on became editorial policy. Almost the entire volume of 1979 consists of special issues: one devoted to Tolstoj, one to Gogol, two to Russian Symbolism and one to symbolism in the Slavic literatures. The latter issue was based on contributions by lecturers and guest-lecturers from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, who were teaching at the Slavic Department of the University of Amsterdam after Jan van der Eng had succeeded in introducing into Amsterdam Slavistics Polish, Czech and Serbian/Croatian languages and literatures as main subjects next to Russian.

In 1981 the cooperation with scholars from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia resulted in a new plan for Russian Literature. In an Editors Note it was announced that the name of the journal would not be changed, but that a subtitle would be added, set in a different type, which would refer to the additional contributions concerning aspects of the Croatian, Serbian, Czech, Slovak and Polish literatures. In order to give space to these literatures the journal would be published in eight instead of six issues per year (divided over two volumes). Each year five issues would be devoted to Russian literature, one to Serbian/Croatian, Czech/Slovak and Polish literature respectively. Editors of the new Slavic series were Stanko Lasic (Serbian/Croatian), Mojmír Grygar and Thomas Winner (Czech/Slovak) and Rolf Fieguth (Polish). Lasic and Grygar had permanent appointments at the Amsterdam Slavic Department. The intention was that the different series would be connected as regards content. In the Editors Note two future common central points were mentioned, which resulted from the distinctive features stressed by Russian Literature during the previous years: the historical avant-garde and the development of descriptive and theoretical poetics in the Slavic countries.

A yearly issue in the Serbian/Croatian, Czech/Slovak and Polish series, next to the five Russian ones, turned out to be too ambitious. There were several reasons for this. Russian Literatures distinctive features, the historical avant-garde and new developments in literary theory, were more relevant for the Russian situation (``discovery of the avant-garde; the blossoming of the Moscow-Tartu school of structuralism and semiotics) than for that of the other Slavic countries. Moreover, Russian Literature published articles in Russian (and, apart from English, sometimes also in German and French), but not in one of the other Slavic languages. Consequently, scholars from Russia had a ``direct entrance to Russian Literature, scholars of other countries first had to have their articles translated. As the great majority of western Slavists concentrated on Russian literature, contributions by them on the other Slavic literatures were relatively scarce.

Not many non-Russian issues have appeared in Russian Literature, at least fewer than expected. The Polish series was the most successful; separate issues appeared in 1983, 1984, 1985, 1987 and 1990. The Serbian and Croatian Series has only produced two special issues, one on the Croatian avant-garde (1983) and one on Yugoslav literature (1991). In the Czech series appeared several issues devoted to Jan Mukarovský (1982, 1986) and an issue on Jan Amos Comenius (1996). On the other hand, there are no fewer than 43 special issues devoted to the Russian avant-garde.

The concentration on the historical avant-garde and on the developments in Slavic literary theory, combined with the steady stream of articles from Russian scholars secured Russian Literature a unique and widely respected position among the Slavic journals in the world. Whereas most of the journals in the field had (and still have) a very wide scope, publishing not only articles on literature but also papers on history, linguistics, politics etc. and giving plenty of room to reviews, Russian Literature consciously restricted itself to articles on literature. Sometimes an entire issue was taken up by such an article, as is the case with a number of contributions by V.N. Toporov. Sometimes even an entire issue was not enough and the ``article had to be published in a double issue (e.g. Miroslav Drozdas `Narrativnye maski russkoj chudozestvennoj prozy, XXXV-III/IV, 1994). Limitation of the size of a contribution has never been one of Russian Literatures prerequisites.

From 1985 onwards part of the avant-garde special issues of Russian Literature became a number of issues devoted to the so-called Zagreb Symposia. At the university of Zagreb Aleksandar Flaker, since the beginning of Russian Literature a member of its editorial board, had started annual conferences on problems and topics of the Russian avant-garde. Ultimate aim of the international conferences was to produce a kind of lexicon or encyclopedia of terms and concepts concerning the Russian avant-garde (groups, movements, authors, artists, programmatic and theoretical notions). The most important results of the symposia have regularly been published in Russian Literature (in Russian). In total, sixteen Zagreb-issues have appeared. Collection in one volume (about 1500 pages) would make a substantial reference work to the Russian avant-garde (a part of the contributions appeared in a German translation as Glossarium der russischen Avantgarde, Graz-Wien, 1989).

The editing of Russian Literature, especially when it had been established at eight issues per year in two volumes, required a lot of time and halfway through the eighties Jan van der Eng asked me to assist him. From January 1987 my name was mentioned in the journal as executive editor. The ``appointment was accompanied by an extension of Russian Literature from 800 to 1000 pages a year (125 pages per issue) in order to deal with the increasing backlog. After Jans retirement in 1990 the editorial work was gradually carried over to me. A serious loss for Russian Literature was the death of co-editor Nils Åke Nilsson in January 1995. Thanks to his many contacts with Slavists all over the world he provided the journal with a lot of valuable material. Sadly, Jan van der Eng, too, did not live to witness and celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of ``his journal. In May of this year he died after a long illness. Considerations of health compelled him to stop his editorial work already at an earlier stage. I officially took over in July 1996. In consultation with Jan, the editorial board was extended; it now consists of A. Flaker (Zagreb, since 1971), L.M. OToole (Perth, since 1976). W. Schmid (Hamburg, since 1987), R.L. Jackson (New Haven), A.A. Hansen-Löve (München) and V.N. Toporov (Moscow).

Jan van der Engs death is a great loss to international Slavistics, to which he has done an invaluable service by founding Russian Literature. With Russian Literature he not only ``gave a voice to the Russian scholars in the Soviet Union, as one of them recently said, but he made the journal a truly international forum which Slavists from all over the world could turn to and contribute to. With its now over 20,000 pages of scholarly articles Russian Literature is an indispensable source of information for the study of Slavic, in particular Russian literature.

The authors of Russian Literature

Since its beginning thirty years ago more than 600 different authors have made a contribution to Russian Literature. Many authors have submitted a single article, a number of others, however, can be considered regular collaborators of the journal. The Author Index shows that Russian Literatures ``champion is Aleksandar Flaker, who has published in the journal no less than eighteen articles, regularly distributed over the thirty years of Russian Literatures existence. Many of Flakers articles are relatively short pieces, originating from his own Zagreb symposia. If we work out who has written the most pages in Russian Literature, the palm of honour should undoubtedly be awarded to Vladimir Nikolaevic Toporov. On his own he is responsible for eight entire issues (and for a ninth together with two colleagues); including the articles written in collaboration with others he fills no less than 1300 pages.

The list of Russian Literatures ``top scorers as regards the number of published contributions is as follows:

The list clearly shows the international orientation of Russian Literature. It also shows the diaspora of the Russian Slavists: half of its authors are of Russian descent. We see the same picture in the next group of twenty authors, those who have published 5–7 articles in Russian Literature; they, too, come from various countries and many of them have Russian roots. One of the consequences is that of the over 1100 articles which have appeared in Russian Literatures fifty volumes (202 issues, Vols. VII, 1979 and VIII, 1980 each consist of 6 issues) a considerable part has been written in Russian. 20 articles have been published in French, some 70 in German, while the rest is almost equally divided between English and Russian.

Who are Russian Literatures authors favourite writers and poets? In view of the great attention for the Russian historical avant-garde that has been characteristic of the journal during the greater parts of its existence, it is not surprising that the poets from the beginning of the twentieth century score points. Mandelštam leads with altogether 65 contributions devoted to him, then follow Chlebnikov (41), Achmatova (34) and Pasternak (29); Cvetaeva (12) and, less unexpectedly, Majakovskij (10), about whom whole libraries have been written during Soviet times, are relatively underexposed. Generous attention has also been paid to the prose-writers of the twenties and thirties: 30 contributions are devoted to Platonov, 22 to Nabokov, 16 to Babel and 13 to Bulgakov. Remarkable is the high score of the ``contemporary poet Iosif Brodskij (46), due to a large extent to the two double issues (XXXVII-II/III, 1995 and XLVII-III/IV, 2000) guest-edited by Valentina Polukhina. The many articles on Brodskij are all the more conspicuous as Russian Literature has published until now only one article on Brodskijs contemporary and fellow Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzenicyn.

Russian Literatures strong emphasis on the avant-garde did not mean that other periods of Russian and Slavic literature and their authors were neglected. Puškin follows hard on the heels of Mandelštam and is second with 63 contributions devoted to him; Dostoevskij is third with 53 and also Tolstoj (31), Cechov (31), Gogol (30), Lermontov (26) and Turgenev (17) are by no means ignored. As regards Russian Symbolism, Belyj (26) receives more attention than Blok (17). In the field of literary theory Bachtin (30) beats Lotman (22).

Readership

In practice for many years and officially since 1994 Russian Literature has only institutional subscribers, so it is hard to say who exactly reads the journal. From the number of subscriptions and the distribution over the world it is clear, however, that Russian Literature is present in all the important university libraries in the United States and Western Europe. In Japan and some other Asian countries the journal can be consulted in a good many places. Sadly enough, distribution in Russia, the country with the largest number of potential readers, is almost nil, owing to lack of funds at the Russian libraries and institutions. The journal is, however, very often quoted by the Russian scholars, which means that the few copies that reach the country are widely read and, presumably, avidly xeroxed. The figure below depicts the geographical spread of the present subscribers:

Future Outlook

At the time Russian Literature started in 1971, it was publishing, irregularly, only a few issues per annum. From 1971 to 1975 twelve issues appeared. Due to the growing recognition of its important role for the study of Slavic literature the journal gradually expanded: 1976-78 – 1 Volume per year, 4 issues per volume, 100 pages per issue; 1979-80 – 1 Volume per year, 6 issues per volume, 100 pages per issue; 1981-86 – 2 Volumes per year, 4 issues per volume, 100 pages per issue and finally 1986-2001 – 2 Volumes per year, 4 issues per volume, 125 pages per issue. The expansion was, however, not enough to get rid of a growing backlog. Authors had to wait for several years sometimes before they saw their accepted articles in print.

Today the backlog has been reduced to an acceptable number. This enables Russian Literature to make new plans for the future. Included in these plans are, apart from the usual miscellanea, a number of special issues (one or two per volume). These special issues can contain either:

1. a collection of invited papers from a guest editor, possibly with the addition of unsolicited manuscripts on the same theme;
2. a collection of invited papers on the anniversary of an authors birth or death;
3. a selection of papers presented at conferences.

Ideas for these types of special issues are always welcome and will be seriously discussed.

This retrospective assessment provides me with the opportunity to thank all those people who have contributed their time and talent to Russian Literature. They include the editors and the editorial assistants, members of the editorial board, advisers, referees and, last but not least, the authors. With all your continuing interest and co-operation Russian Literature will be able to maintain its current position as one of the highly valued quality journals in the area of Slavic literature.

Note on Transliteration

For technical reasons (the indexes will be online on Russian Literatures website, http://www.elsevier.nl/inca/publications/store/5/0/5/5/9/4/) in the indexes the usual transliteration from Cyrillic has been modified:

For the same reasons in Czech, Polish, Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian names and titles most diacritics had to be omitted.