The Rereaders: Accidental Anarchism in the Soviet 1960s

• In Event: Left Perspectives on Cultures of Decline I: Forgotten Futures of Late- and Post-Socialism

Abstract

One symptom of reading too deeply into the history of ideas in the late Soviet era was accidental anarchism. Historians studying the Russian revolutionary movement, philosophy students striving for a more rigorous Marxism, poets paying literary homage, and artists searching for an avant-garde aesthetic: none of them set out to be a political outcast. But by reading and rereading they came to articulate a “patchwork” anarchist worldview. This paper discusses two communities of 1960s rereaders: Sigei and Nikonova’s anarfuty group and the Galanskov-Osipov circle. It also reflects on the fate of their political aesthetics after the Soviet collapse.

Author

• Ania Aizman, U of Chicago