When I became the smallest boss in the newspaper, my then editor-in-chief, a lady who became a seasoned wolf of journalism back in Soviet times, told me: “Remember, since you have begun to grow up, managing any media project is akin to running through a minefield. Not because it's dangerous, but because it's unpredictable. We are dealing with information, and it is impossible to calculate and manage it. Therefore, all the chief editors are fleeing, but none of us knows when and on what exactly he will be blown up.
Then I didn’t understand it, but then, when, like that Pinocchio, I grew up, studied and bought a thousand new jackets ... In general, having learned a little about the history of domestic journalism, I was convinced that the thesis is absolutely correct. How many times media managers are even great media managers! - ended their careers due to a completely unimaginable coincidence, which was absolutely impossible to predict.
I won't tell now how the editor-in-chief of "Funny Pictures" and the great illustrator Ivan Semyonov almost got burned on insects - in the truest sense of the word. It's still more of a Friday story. But I’ll tell you the story about the great and terrible Vasily Zakharchenko, especially since it is quite according to Habr’s profile.
In the Soviet magazine "Technology for Youth" they were very fond of science and fantasy. Therefore, they often combined, publishing science fiction in a magazine.
For many, many years, from 1949 to 1984, the magazine was headed by the legendary editor Vasily Dmitrievich Zakharchenko, who, in fact, made out of it that “Technique for Youth”, which thundered throughout the country, became a legend of Soviet journalism and was well received. Thanks to the latter circumstance, from time to time "Technology for Youth" succeeded in what few people succeeded in publishing contemporary Anglo-American science fiction writers.
No, contemporary Anglo-American science fiction writers were both translated and published in the USSR. But in periodicals - quite rarely.
Why? Because it's a huge audience. These are unimaginable print runs even by Soviet standards. Technique for Youth, for example, had a circulation of 1,7 million copies.
But, as I said, sometimes it worked. So, for almost the whole of 1980, happy science fiction lovers read Arthur Clarke's novel "Fountains of Paradise" in the magazine.
Arthur Clark was considered a friend of the Soviet country, visited us, visited Star City, met and corresponded with cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. As for the novel "Fountains of Paradise", Clark never hid that in the novel he used the idea of a "space elevator", first put forward by Yuri Artsutanov, a designer from Leningrad.
After the publication of "Fountains ..." Arthur Clark visited the USSR in 1982, where, in particular, he met with Leonov, Zakharchenko, and Artsutanov.
Yuri Artsutanov and Arthur Clark visit the Museum of Cosmonautics and Rocketry in Leningrad
And as a result of this visit in 1984, Zakharchenko managed to push through the publication in Technique for Youth of another novel by the world-famous science fiction writer called 2010: Odyssey Two. It was a sequel to his famous book 2001: A Space Odyssey based on the screenplay of Stanley Kubrick's cult film.
To a large extent, this was helped by the fact that in the second book there was a lot of Soviet. The plot was based on the fact that the Alexei Leonov spacecraft with a Soviet-American crew on board is sent to Jupiter to unravel the mystery of the Discovery ship left in the first book in Jupiter's orbit.
True, Clark had a dedication on the first page:
Two great Russians: General A. A. Leonov - cosmonaut, Hero of the Soviet Union, artist and academician A. D. Sakharov - scientist, Nobel Prize winner, humanist.
But the dedication, you know, was thrown out in the magazine. Even without any short fight.
The first issue came out safely, followed by the second, and readers were already looking forward to a long leisurely reading - just like in 1980.
But there was no continuation in the third issue. The people got excited, but then decided - you never know. In the fourth, everything will be fine for sure.
But in the fourth issue there was something incredible - a miserable retelling of the further content of the novel, crumpled into three paragraphs.
“Doctor, what was that?! Is this for sale?!” - Readers of "Technology - Youth" goggled their eyes. But the answer became known only after perestroika.
As it turned out, shortly after the start of publication in Technique for Youth, the International Herald Tribune published an article entitled "COSMONAUTS - DISSIDENTS" THANKS TO THE CENSORS FLIGHT ON THE PAGES OF THE SOVIET MAGAZINE.
S. Sobolev in his provides the full text of this note. It says in particular:
Soviet dissidents, who rarely manage to laugh in this solemnly formal country, today can chuckle at the joke played by the famous English science fiction writer Arthur Clarke on government censors. This seeming joke - "a small but elegant Trojan horse", as one of the dissidents dubbed it, is contained in A. Clarke's novel "2010: The Second Odyssey".<...>
The names of all the fictional astronauts in the novel actually correspond to the names of famous dissidents. <...> In the book there are no political differences between the characters - Russians. Nevertheless, the astronauts are namesakes:
— Victor Brailovsky, a computer specialist, one of the leading Jewish activists, who is due to be released this month after three years of exile in Central Asia;
— Ivan Kovalyov, engineer and founder of the now-disbanded Helsinki Group for Human Rights Watch. He is serving a seven-year sentence in a labor camp;
— Anatoly Marchenko, a forty-six-year-old worker who spent 18 years in camps for political speeches, and is currently serving a term that ends in 1996;
- Yuri Orlov - Jewish activist and one of the founders of the Helsinki Group. Renowned physicist Orlov completed a seven-year sentence in a labor camp last month and is serving an additional five-year sentence in Siberian exile.
- Leonid Ternovsky - a physicist who founded the Helsinki Group in Moscow in 1976. He served a three-year sentence in the camp;
- Mikola Rudenko - one of the founders of the "Helsinki Group" in Ukraine, who, after seven years in a camp, should be released this month and sent to a settlement;
- Gleb Yakunin - a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, sentenced in 1980 to five years of camp labor and another five years of settlement on charges of anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation.
Why Clark set up Zakharchenko in such a way, with whom for many years if he was not friends, then he was on excellent terms - I don’t really understand. Fans of the writer even came up with a witty explanation that Clark was not to blame, the same principle worked that gave birth to General Gogol and General Pushkin in Bond. Fantast, they say, without a second thought used Russian surnames that were widely heard in the Western press - we, they say, also from Americans knew Angela Davis and Leonard Peltier best of all. It is hard to believe, however, - it turned out to be a painfully homogeneous selection.
Well, in “Technology for Youth”, you yourself understand what has begun. As Alexander Perevozchikov, then editor-in-chief of the magazine, recalled:
Prior to this episode, our editor Vasily Dmitrievich Zakharchenko was well received in the highest offices. But after Clark, the attitude towards him changed dramatically. He, who had just received another award from the Lenin Komsomol, was literally eaten, smeared on the wall. And our magazine was almost on the verge of destruction. Nevertheless, it was not our puncture, but Glavlita. They should have followed and advised. Thus, we were only able to publish two chapters out of fifteen. The remaining thirteen chapters went into exposition. On the printed text page, I recounted what would happen to Clark next. But the brutalized Glavlit forced me to shorten the retelling three more times. We printed the Odyssey in full much later.
Indeed, Zakharchenko wrote an explanatory note to the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, where he "disarmed before the party." According to the editor-in-chief, "two-faced" Clark "in a vile way" gave the crew of Soviet cosmonauts "surnames of a group of anti-Soviet-minded elements prosecuted for hostile actions". The editor-in-chief admitted that he had lost his vigilance and promised to correct the mistake.
Vasily Zakharchenko
Did not help. The magazine was not closed, but "shaken up" thoroughly. Two weeks after the revealing Western article, Zakharchenko was fired, and a number of responsible employees of the magazine received penalties of varying severity. Zakharchenko, in addition, became a “leper” - his exit visa was canceled, he was expelled from the editorial boards of Children's Literature and Young Guard, he was no longer invited to radio and television - even to the program he created about nugget motorists “You Can Do It” .
In the preface to Odyssey 3, Arthur C. Clarke apologized to Leonov and Zakharchenko, although the latter looks somewhat mocking:
“Finally, I hope that cosmonaut Alexei Leonov has already forgiven me for placing him next to Dr. Andrei Sakharov (who was still in exile in the city of Gorky at the time of his initiation). And I express my sincere regrets to my good-natured Moscow host and editor Vasily Zharchenko (as in the text - Zharchenko - VN) for getting him into big trouble by using the names of various dissidents - most of whom, I am glad to see, are no longer in prison . One day, I hope, Technique Youth subscribers will be able to read those chapters of the novel that have so mysteriously disappeared.
There will be no comments, I will only note that after that it is already somehow strange to talk about randomness.
The cover of 2061: Odyssey Three, where the apology appeared
That, in fact, is the whole story. I draw your attention to the fact that all this happened already in the Chernenkov era, and there were literally a few months left before perestroika, acceleration and glasnost. Yes, and Clark's novel was still published in Technique for Youth, and even in Soviet times - in 1989-1990.
I confess honestly - this story leaves me with a dual, even triple impression.
Now it is already surprising how much ideological confrontation meant then, if human destinies were broken because of such a trifle.
But at the same time, how much our country meant on the planet back then. Today it is difficult for me to imagine a situation where a first-line Western science fiction writer dedicates a book to two Russians.
And, most importantly, how great was the importance of knowledge in our country then. Indeed, even in a revealing article by the International Herald Tribune, it was noted in passing that "Russians are among the most devoted fans of science fiction in the world", and the one and a half million circulation of a popular science magazine is the best proof of this.
Now, of course, everything has changed. In some ways for the better, in some ways for the worse.
It has changed so much that there is practically nothing left of the world in which this story took place. And in the brave new world, no one is interested in the dissidents who have done their job, or the Tekhnika-Youth magazine, which is now published in an insignificant circulation on state subsidies, or - which is the pity of all - the space elevator.
Yuri Artsutanov died quite recently, on January 1, 2019, but no one noticed. The only obituary was published in the Troitsky Variant newspaper a month later.
Source: habr.com