Scope and Content Note
Anatolii Zakharovich Rubinov (1924-2009 ) published in the weekly newspaper Literaturnaia gazeta about 300 of his own and other writers’ articles on social and economic issues confronting the Soviet Union and Russia. In response to these articles, he received approximately 500,000 letters from readers. The present collection consists of letters in response to approximately 80 articles published between 1968 and 1996, with the bulk of the collection dating from between 1968 and 1990. After an article appeared in Literaturnaia gazeta, most of the letters responding to that article were written within the following 4-6 weeks, although some responses arrived four or more months later. The collection is comprised almost entirely of such correspondence, handwritten or typed in Russian and saved by Rubinov over nearly 30 years. More than 80% of the items have been organized into the series "Letters from Readers to Literaturnaia gazeta," which consists primarily of reader responses to Rubinov's articles but also includes around 20 files of responses to articles by other writers as well as a small number of letters from government agencies. The other three series—"Letters from Agencies to Readers or to Literaturnaia gazeta," "Bulletins," and "Roundtable Transcripts"—account for the remaining 20% of the collection. Some folders contain responses to one article, while others contain responses to two or more articles, and in some cases responses to a single article are divided into two or more folders. The 21,350 items in this collection provide a more personal and critical perspective on Soviet society and everyday life than can be gleaned from newspapers.
The editor-in-chief of Literaturnaia gazeta from 1962 to 1988 was Aleksandr Borisovich Chakovskii (1913-1994). Chakovskii had served the political regime beginning in 1952 by severely criticizing Vasilii Grossman's novel Za pravoe delo (For the Right Cause) for being "ideologically harmful." He was subsequently appointed to progressively higher positions and became the editor of Literaturnaia gazeta in December 1962. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich had just been released, and Chakovskii published articles by opponents of this work and of liberalization. As the 1960s progressed he expanded his criticism to include other Soviet writers with liberal opinions. In the 1970s his stance became more neutral, or was neutralized by the paper's staff, allowing Literaturnaia gazeta to publish a wider range of views.
During the 1970s and 1980s "Literaturka," as it was called by many who identified with it, was considered the most liberal periodical in the Soviet Union. By taking party-line stances on foreign affairs, often aggressively so, the paper faced less interference when discussing domestic social and economic issues. From the 1970s through the early 1990s the paper routinely consisted of two eight-page sections. The first section covered politics and literary criticism, while coverage of social and economic issues was buried in the middle of the second section. The paper was favored by the intelligentsia but also drew interest from other groups. Circulation reached nearly 6.5 million at its height in the late 1980s.