Saturday, May 30, 2015

On Raduga, Mir, Progress Publishers: In The Calvert Journal

Now this story was a delight to write. Many years ago, I wrote a little post about Raduga, Mir, Progress and other publishers in the Soviet Union era who flooded India with Russian literature, children's stories, textbooks and others in translation. I continue to get emails from people asking to buy my collection. I reiterate, these books are NOT for sale.

I inherited a large collection of Russian literature from my grandfather. It sparked a lifetime love for Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin and others. It was also how, I realize now, I got to know my grandfather. I wrote about these memories and what these books meant to me for The Calvert Journal, an excellent online magazine run from the United Kingdom. They carry features on art, culture, books, etc from and about the former Soviet Union states, the New East.

Read my story here, or see the pre-edited version below. Do make sure you see the pictures with the story, on the CJ website.

BY THE BOOK: REFLECTIONS ON AN INDIAN CHILDHOOD READING SOVIET HARDBACKS

During the 1960s and 70s, Russian novels were easy to come by in India, even in remote towns. When Deepa Bhasthi inherited her grandfather's collection of Soviet books, she didn't realise the impact they would have on her life.





Grandma would, every now and then, suddenly look at me, as if noticing me for the first time, and remark that I had my grandfather's forehead, and his quick temper. Grandpa was a Indian freedom fighter turned Communist card holder, an oddity in the 1960s and 70s in small town south India. He died, almost to the day, six months before I was born, leaving behind, among other things, several coats that grandma would later turn into recycled bags and a collection of books that by virtue of living in the house he built, I almost entirely inherited.

In the little village/town (we could never agree on which it was) where I grew up, it used to rain for over six months a year. In those days, friends didn't 'hang out' and phone calls, if the telephone lines were up, were usually for asking after homework. The only newspaper vendor in town sold only pulp fiction. And so it came to pass that the first novel I read as a ten year old was Maxim Gorky's Mother, a beautiful Raduga edition. The hard bound book had a cream jacket with the picture of an older woman in a black full length coat, a wrinkled scarf covering her hair, a half hidden suitcase in her hand. Perhaps I was judging by the cover when I pulled out the book from grandpa's library, but it led to a lifetime love for Russian literature. It was happily aided by the propaganda-ish books that flooded into India in the years before the USSR disintegrated, books on literature, science, comics and everything else by publishers like Raduga, Progress, Mir and others.

Before the liberation of the Indian economy in 1991, the same year that the Soviet Union collapsed, India and the USSR often sided up to each other. While Indian movies in Hindi were hugely popular in Russia, translations of Tolstoys, Dostoyevskys and Pushkins poured into India. At least a few generations of Indians from the 1960s onwards grew up reading Russian literature, not least because these books were sold cheaper than most others in the market. The books of the Soviet Union were almost always hard bound, beautifully illustrated and with the prettiest covers. I remember, as I write this, the swirling calligraphy of the P in Puskin’s The Captain’s Daughter and the little house, tree clad and mysterious, on the jacket of Tolstoy's Childhood, Boyhood, Youth.

A whole generation of the 80s children, those that knew a little of socialism in their childhoods and awkwardly went on to embrace the excesses of capitalism has taken to the internet to talk of these books. I hadn't known how strong a fan base these books had until I wrote a blog post years ago about my grandfather's collection. I continue to be inundated with offers to buy my whole inventory at whatever price I asked for.

Every new mail sparks a little of the interest again to read up on the history of these books. The internet throws up some tidbits but it doesn't tell me what I want to really know.

It tells me that the Foreign Language Publishing House (FLPH) was started to centralize all titles meant for non-Soviet readers. They published books on how progressive the USSR was and how happy its working class, political titles and early literature. Sometime in the 1960s, or in 1931 - depending on which source you want to rely on - the FLPH became Progress Publishers with the Sputnik satellite on one half of its logo and the Russian letter for progress on the other half. A decade or two later, they gave up publishing literature to Raduga which went on to publish a lot of classic titles, a few modern day writers and several children's books. Alongside existed Mir Publishers, who were in charge of science and technology books. Others like Novosti Press Agency Publishing House for pamphlets and booklets and Aurora Publishers in Leningrad for art books made up the bulk of the Soviet publishing scene. Misha, published by Pravda Printing Plant was a children's monthly that had crosswords to learn Russian language with, cartoons, folk tales and a pen pal section I got addresses from and exchanged letters with two girls in Moscow.

The internet tells me this, without giving up any specifics of the people behind them and their stories. I don't know who to ask.

It doesn't, for instance, tell me the first names of Babkov, Smirnov, Glushkov, Maron and others, scientists, engineers at government institutes and universities who wrote manuals and textbooks on things like airport engineering, heat and mass transfer, radio measurements and such like. My ambition in astro-physics, before I began to dread the physics part in high school, was fuelled by a small blue book called Space Adventures in your Home by F. Rabiza. I wonder who Rabiza was, none of the many fan sites for Soviet books say that. I have to be satisfied with an initial before these surnames. Author bios were probably not important in the service of the motherland.

Navakarnataka Publications in Karnataka, my home state, who were supplied with hundreds of thousands of books in every genre, sold a wholesome image of the Soviet Union for Rs 5, Rs 10, at most Rs 50 for a real fat book. Still much lesser than a full dollar. Some stray copies creep into the second hand book stores, now and then, selling like hot tea in a park on a cold day, often at three to four times the original price. They call them collectibles, these days.

My copy of Mother was possibly a Progress edition, I forget now. Most of the titles grandfather owned, and the ones I continue to collect, are either Progress, or Raduga. Each prettier than the next. One has Pushkin looking over his shoulder, a tall lady on his arm. The other has Tolstoy, a much older Tolstoy, frowning, long white bearded. A young Chekov looks handsome, and serious, intense. Pushkin again, leaning against a pillar and staring out, casual, one leg up against the pillar. A blurry structure, grey, fluid, befitting for Dostoyevsky's Notes from a Dead House.

Apparently, most of the works were available in several Indian languages. I only ever read them in English. I wonder who the translators were, for the other Indian languages. I wonder a lot of things. The internet hasn't bothered digging up too much it seems like.

Let me tell you here the story of the fox and the grapes. There was once a fox that tried and tried to jump up to eat ripe grapes. But try as it might, it couldn't jump high enough. It then walked away, loudly remarking that the grapes were probably too sour anyway. I am going to say that I prefer the mystery and no-information, because probably the history is too prosaic anyway.

The 1980s were when I discovered and grew up with books that made names like Boris and Sasha and Nadya and Tatyana and Olga and Vera as relatable as Rama and Sita and Arjuna from the Indian epics that grandma told stories from. They seem like fabulous years, seen through the eyes of wistfulness for the good ol' days and simpler times. Russian writers, and by extension, the Soviet Union seemed exotically foreign and thus especially intriguing. But perhaps more importantly for me, these books were my connection to my grandfather. Perhaps it was through these that I came to relate to a man who in his own way was the rebel I would turn out to be - left leaning, liberal - in a household and a community that insisted on voting Right.

Or maybe I don't really want to know. The invitation to imagine your own stories and endings is what lends timelessness to a work of literature after all.

15 comments:

Cosmetopia Digest said...

Hi Deepa,
I was an 80s child in Kerala (last bastion of Communism in India) and grew up with the Raduga books. My Gramps used to take me to these shops and say, "Buy what you like", and I would pick far more books than my little arms could carry - we would walk home, his hands full of bags and bags of books, with me instructed to hold on to a finger. And he would have spent just Rs 50 or less! Then followed a few delightful weeks of Ivan the handsome prince, Vasilisa the Wise, Baba Yaga the evil witch, and so on. As the 1990s came, bringing studies, many a physics and maths textbook from the Soviet Republic made things easier.
Good times, good days. I miss those simpler - but far more contented - days.

Unknown said...

Hi Deepa! Your story ignited an old passion in me for these Soviet publications I used to enjoy in my childhood in 1970s.I was particularly interested in Children's literature in Bengali! Oh, what quality books they published, translated by legendary Bengali literary figures like Samar Sen Nani Bhowmik et al. I would love to read them again & again now, if I get.
Regards, Dipankar Chowdhury, Kolkata
cdpnkr@rediffmail.com
04-08-2016

Unknown said...

Hi Deepa! Your story ignited an old passion in me for these Soviet publications I used to enjoy in my childhood in 1970s.I was particularly interested in Children's literature in Bengali! Oh, what quality books they published, translated by legendary Bengali literary figures like Samar Sen Nani Bhowmik et al. I would love to read them again & again now, if I get.
Regards, Dipankar Chowdhury, Kolkata
cdpnkr@rediffmail.com
04-08-2016

Unknown said...

Do you have a copy of the children's story : SILVER HOOF by Pavel Bazhov? Was it a Raduga publication?
.
Dipankar Chowdhury
cdpnkr@rediffmail.com
05-08-2016

Deepa Bhasthi said...

Thank you for your comment, Mr Chowdhury. I am afraid I don't have a copy of that book, nor do I know any further details of it.

Unknown said...

I stumbled upon your blog while searching for Raduga Publications. The Children's books translated into Bengali were my favourite. My father used to buy them from Kolkata. I also remember having some copies of "Soviet Nari" a ladies magazine,at home. My mother liked them for sweater designs and an array of knitting and sewing guidelines. Even at our sleepy little town at the Himalayn foothills near Darjeeling, books published by Raduga could be found almost at every home. Those beautifully illustrated books embedded the love for books and especially for literature. Now I realise that many people who grew up in the 70s and 80s share the same story. Now they want to collect them to retouch fond memories of childhood. Thanks a lot for your enchanting story.

Deepa Bhasthi said...

Thanks for your comment, Ruplekha. I am unaware of the women's magazines, but I do have old copies of Misha, the children's magazine.
I am writing another piece on this topic for Lit Hub shortly, do look out for it in these pages.

My best,
Deepa

Ajith1968 said...

hiii Deepa
I have the same copy of 'takes of Sebastopol' with me....
i was just fooling about the publishers and happens to stumble into your blog....
You are very lucky and never ever sell them.....
Smith

HLANGL said...

First came the era of Russian classical literature, the authors Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Gogol, Maxim Gorky, etc. belonged to this first phase. Then came the era of Soviets and consequently, the Soviet literature, the likes of Mikhail Sholokhov, Nikolai Ostrovsky, etc. pioneered it, and the likes of Chinghiz Aitmatov, etc. too belonged there. I loved both, though I still felt a certain considerable percentage of the latter had come from the Soviet political propaganda though I still found them fascinating. Then there were the likes of ‎Boris Pasternak, the one who wrote the epic novel "Doctor Zhivago". He coincided with the era of Soviets yet was not part of their propaganda, and had been at times critical of their hard-line ideology too, hence had not got the chance to publish his books in Russia during his lifetime. We, even in Sri Lanka, still continue to love these old Russian & Soviet books/literature, the most of which had been published by the Foreign Language Publishing House located in Moscow, and distributed worldwide before the collapse of USSR. Almost of of these books had been translated to Sinhalese too, the native language of the majority of Sri Lankans, and had been printed in Russia it self by their publishers; mostly by Progress and Raduga, to be sold here mostly at concessionary rates. The USSR had the intention of spreading its literature and the culture as a whole throughout the world, certainly with the ultimate intention of spreading their ideology Communism to a worldwide community across the borders, so this programme seemed to have come from as part of that propaganda. As I do remember, there had been a similar yet a comparatively lower profile programme launched by China from Beijing too, but the books from Moscow had been almost always of far superior quality. With the books not coming from Moscow since the dissolution of the union and the subsequent fall of the publishers like Progress Publishers, Raduga Publishers, etc., certain local printers here in Colombo have started printing/publishing those old Russian & Soviet books/literature for the community here.... Such is the amount of nostalgia their literature had left behind even in a comparatively much smaller society/culture located thousands of miles away.

Deepa Bhasthi said...

Thank you for sharing your memories, HLANGL.

Roy said...

Deepa can you tell me where can I buy these old russian classics translated to english in India. Got to admit that is m envying your books collection.

Deepa Bhasthi said...

You will have to look for them in second hand book stores in cities. Or try on websites like ebay - I was once told some books came up for sale there now and then.

Rahul choudhary said...

Hi. I have many old edition of Mir/raduga books in hindi/english for sale. If someone wants please whatsapp me on 9780051220.

ET said...

www.instagram.com/sovi_et_world

The soviet books - Literature and Children from my collection on exhibit.

I keep adding to these books on display as a sheet passion.

Welcome to my Insta Handle.

ET said...

I could sell a few of my spares if Interested