New Books In Eastern European Studies

Russia has a long history of publishers operating from abroad, producing books and periodicals for a Russian-speaking audience. One notable example is The Bell (Kolokol), published by Alexander Herzen, the Russian writer and thinker who emigrated in the mid-19th century. The waves of Russian emigration in the 20th century—beginning with those fleeing the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution—led to the creation of numerous Russian-language publishing ventures, ranging from short-lived projects to long-standing institutions. Among the most well-remembered are the YMCA Press in Paris, Posev and Grani in Germany, and Ardis Publishing, founded in the early 1970s—not by Russians, but by American literary scholars. Exiled Russian publishers not only printed the works of fellow émigré authors but also played a crucial role in tamizdat—smuggling manuscripts deemed ideologically unacceptable by the Soviet regime out of the USSR, publishing them abroad, and then covertly reintroducing them into the country for clandestine distribu