Books Published in Russia Overwhelmingly Reissues of Soviet Ones or Translations, Publisher Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 10 – Nearly half of all books published in the Russian Federation in 2017 (47.3 percent of 117,000 titles), the last year for which there are official statistics, were issued in 500 copies or fewer; but an even more disturbing figure, Georgy Gupalo says, is the absence of books by living Russian authors.

            In one list of best sellers, there is only one Russian author in the top 28. The remainder consists of books reprinted from Soviet times or translated from other languages of authors living and working abroad, an indication of three disturbing trends, the Russian publisher says (facebook.com/gmgupalo/posts/10213766318731473 reposted at newizv.ru/article/general/10-04-2019/uzhe-ne-samaya-chitayuschaya-kak-degradiruet-rossiyskaya-knizhnaya-industriya).

            First of all, Russians are “deeply conservative and don’t need new authors.” Second, “everything Soviet is now fashionable.” And third, there aren’t enough publications interested in new Russian books and capable of providing guidance to those who might buy them. As a result, Russians increasingly buy reissues of Soviet books or translations.

            “Several publishers,” Gupalo continues, “successfully work exclusively on the republishing of Soviet books. And if you look in at any central bookstore, what is the picture before you? 30 percent are reissues of Soviet classics, 30 to 50 percent are translations of foreign books, and the rest are new books.”

            This pattern, so very different than in other countries, both reflects and reinforces the current trend in Russia to avoid the new and innovative and to turn instead to the past, a pattern that holds for children books as well and thus may very well continue well into the future, the publisher suggests.