Author Description

Since The 1960s, The Western Public Has Read And Discussed Politically Charged Samizdat Literature From The Soviet Union, Exemplified By Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago And Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, As Well As By Abram Tertz's And Nikolai Arzhak's (a.k.a. Andrei Sinyavsky's And Yulii Daniel's) Grotesques. The 1966 Publication Of Mikhail Bulgakov's Novel The Master And Margarita, Which Had Been Sitting In A Desk Drawer For More Than A Quarter Century, Revealed The Presence Of A Cultural Underground In The Depths Of The Stalinist 1930s. In 1974, After The Scandalous Bulldozer Exhibition, When Bulldozers Were Sent To Crush Paintings Displayed At An Uncensored Open-air Exhibition Before The Cameras Of Western Journalists, The World Learned About Another Kind Of Underground-the Very Form Of Which Was Nonconformist, Even If The Content Could Be Politically Neutral-- Provided By Publisher.