How did banned manuscripts make their way from behind the Iron Curtain to the West? How were they published and read by the émigré community, and what did the authors themselves know and think about this process? Yakov Klots’s book examines the first Western editions and the reception abroad of texts concerning the Gulag and Stalinism during the 1950s–1980s. *Tamizdat*—as both a literary practice and a political institution of the Cold War era—constituted an alternative sphere of cultural production; while it stood in opposition to the Soviet regime and the dogmas of Socialist Realism, it was not devoid of its own hierarchies, ideologies, and even forms of censorship. At the heart of the narrative lies the story of the literary connections forged—despite the Iron Curtain—between publishers, critics, and readers in the West and authors within the USSR.
Yakov Klots is a philologist and Slavic scholar who teaches Russian literature at Hunter College, City University of New York.