◆ SpookStack

Of Quixote in Russian translation, which was issu Ifew monins berore our visit, did not appear in the bookstores at all, because the entire edition had been bought up by advance orders. We heard a few Russians grumbling about this state of affairs in terms that hinted at speculation in literature. These hints were apparently confirmed later when one member of our group happened upon a kind of ambulant literary black: market in the heart of Moscow. The market was "black" not because the books that changed hands there were forbidden but because specula- tion in anything is forbidden in the Soviet Union. The books were simply works that were in such great demand they could not be obtained in the bookshops. Most of them were Russian translations of works by foreign authors-Dickens, Balzac, O. Henry, Dreiser, Jack London, Mark Twain and others. Crouded Bookstores In Moscow bookstores we often saw crowds standing three and four deep around the counters at which literary works were sold. The contrast between the literary counters and the political counters was so striking that we began deliberately checking on our impressions during our walks through the city. Not once did we see a crowd standing around the counter at which political books were sold. Several times we did not even see a clerk there. (No doubt she was helping to take care of the crowd at the liter. ary counter!) Once when we teased a Soviet acquaintance about this implication of political indifference, he replied indignantly: "It doesn't mean a thing! That's only because there are always sc many new books appearing at the literary counters. All of us have the Marxist classies at home already; so we don't have to spend a lot of time at the political counter. But you should see the crowd there when some important new political book comes out! We are still not convinced. To us the empty political counters. in the bookshops reinforced our impression that Soviet citizens are among the most unpolitical pcople we have evcr known. Here too, no doubt, one can see the Communists' own dialectical process at work, as if to spite them. Their overemphasis upon the forms of political activity without the political freedom that would give life to these forms has produced the very antithesis of what they wanted: political formalism and apathy, the trans- formation of political activity into political ritual. What is it that has led to the great Russian interest in the classics of their own and foreign literatures? One reason, no doubt, is thet the Russians have always taken literature seriously.. 65