1999 Articles

Big-Buck Books: Pulp Fiction in Post-Soviet Russia

Goscilo, Helena

By now the wholesale visualization of West during the 1980s, has fully entrenched itself in the urban centers of the former Soviet Union. Yet Russians arguably continue to be, as the self- congratulatory Soviet cliche insisted, "the most readerly nation in the world" ("samyi chitaiushchii narod v mire"). Indeed, Valentin Ovchinnikov, the director of Biblio-Globus, one of Moscow's largest bookstores, prides himself and his domain on that distinction: "As before, we remain the greatest country of readers in the world" ("My po-prezhnemu ostaemsia samoi chitaiushchei stranoi v mire") (Ul'chenko).