The place of poetry in the ecosystem of Russian émigré Kontinent thick journal

Philipp Lekmanov, University of Toronto

Founded by the writer Vladimir Maksimov, Kontinent was one of the most influential

periodicals of the third wave of Russian emigration since its creation in 1974 and until the

collapse of the USSR. Each issue of Kontinent consisted of 400 to 450 pages, following the

nineteenth century tradition of the thick journal (tolstyi zhurnal), a periodical format “with a

range of departments that speak to a variety of intellectual, cultural, and literary interests, and

with a more or less discernible ideology” (Maguire 1). Since the first issue opening with a

manifesto enlisting Kontinent’s key values, the journal adopted a clear political stance

declaring itself a platform uniting the anticommunist thinkers. In my intervention, I will

analyze the formation of the journal’s agenda focusing on the element that receives the least

attention in discussions of Kontinent’s ideology – the journal’s poetic corpus.

Many poets published in Kontinent (such as Iosif Brodskii or Viktor Krivulin) claimed

that poetry should focus on transcendental issues instead of zlobodnvenyi (hot) topics.

Nevertheless, relying on the contextualized readings of Naum Korzhavin’s “In Defense of

Progress” (V zashchitu progressa) and Iosif Brodskii’s “Homage to Yalta” (Posviashchaetsia

Ialte), I will argue that poetry constituted an important component of the periodical’s

ideological ecosystem. Appearing on the pages of Kontinent these poems acquired topical

political connotations they lacked as standalone pieces. This reframing was a result of several

editorial techniques accompanying the various stages of publication.

Using archival sources such as correspondence between the journal and its

contributors, I will argue that the poems published in the periodical were selected not

exclusively for their aesthetic merits as argued by the editors but also by their conformity with
the journal’s position. I will also discuss the effect of textual cross-pollination that occurred

once the poems were published in Kontinent. In proximity to belletristic texts, the poems

devoted to such seemingly timeless topics as the conflict of culture and barbarism, or the

subjectivity of truth acquired the potential of being interpreted as topical denunciations of

precise repressive practices. Conversely, the essays, when read as commentaries to the poems,

fit within larger cultural frameworks instead of functioning only as discussions of particular

political issues. Kontinent’s paratexts also played an important role in the process of shaping

the intended ideological implications of the poetry. Such editing choices as accompanying

poems with photographs referencing the author’s prison experience, biographical afterwords,

and rubric headings (underlining the distance between the author’s and the editorial board

position), served to intensify the ideological charge of Kontinent’s poetry.

My analysis will demonstrate how the specific Russian thick journal format was

appropriated by the exiled dissidents in the goals of developing an ideological paradigm

contesting the communist thought. The focus on the editing techniques will allow me to

reconstruct the journal’s agenda as a complex product emerging from the interaction of

various textual and paratextual components of the periodical, adding to our understanding of

Russian émigré culture and of alternative cultural politics in the late Soviet period.