The Transnational Socialization of Tamizdat as a Family Affair: The Networks of the Chernov and Andreev Families

During the so-called cultural Cold War, book diplomacy played a determinant role in promoting the transnational production and circulation of clandestine Soviet and Eastern European literature across the Iron Curtain, a geopolitical and ideological border extremely permeable to cultural objects. Through the analysis of the agency of socio-cultural actors (writers, translators, publishers, editors, dissidents, diplomats, activists of social movements, etc.) cooperating in the transnational socialization of tamizdat, and the reconstruction of the relational networks established among state and non-state individuals and institutions (literary agencies, organizations, publishing houses etc.), this essay highlights the role played by the most active, variegated and big group of the transnational community of tamizdatchiki: the Soviet and Eastern European émigrés. With this aim, the relational and social networks of the Chernovs and the Andreevs will be illustrated, as the members of these prominent Russian émigré families were involved in the smuggling, production and circulation of several tamizdat, such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The First Circle and The Gulag Archipelago, as well as Nadezhda Mandelshtam’s Hope Against Hope.