Yakov Klots: Tamizdat in the (Cold) War Era: Abram Tertz’s Pkhentz

Written in 1957, “Pkhentz” was first published abroad – in tamizdat – in the wake of the infamous show trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel (aka. Abram Tertz and Nikolai Arzhak) in Moscow in February, 1966. While ostensibly addressing the experience of living with various covert identities in the mid-century Soviet Union (Jewish, dissident, political prisoner), the story’s subsequent wanderings across borders and historical periods broaden its purview to include refugee, émigré, and queer experience. Taking “Pkhentz” as a case study, the lecture will introduce tamizdat as a literary practice and political institution of the Cold War era and raise the question of how and why it is (im)possible to place it in the geopolitical context of nowadays, since the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and another (fifth) wave of political emigration from Russia itself.

Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies, Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (OWNER), Slavic Languages & Literatures