1993 Reports

The Book Business in Postcommunist Russia: Moscow, Year One (1992)

Lowe, David A.

Public discussion of Russian life in 1992 drew exhaustively on the rhetoric of crisis. The situation in the book world led several distinguished representatives of the intelligentsia to declare "The Book is in Danger!" At the same time, the several million people who rode Moscow's subway on any given day saw a thriving book trade in and around stations. Why then cries of alarm? In the following pages I will try to answer that question by summarizing the conditions, factors, and events that shaped editors', publishers', distributors' and buyers' decisions in the first year following the collapse of the USSR.