Our Notes & References

Inscribed by the author, “one of the most beloved Russian people’s writers of the 20th century”, praised among other by Nobel-prize winner Joseph Brodsky (Saprykin, our translation here and elsewhere).

First edition of “the most important book for Sergei [Dovlatov], if not his favourite” (Genis).

Writer and journalist Sergei Dovlatov (1941-90) was unable to print his works in official Soviet publications during his lifetime. In the late 1960s, his works were distributed in samizdat, which led to his persecution by the authorities and immigration to the USA in 1978. He died of heart failure just a couple of years before he gained outstanding national fame in his homeland: his complete collections of works were published in Russia in multiple editions and large print runs, unlike works of all other Russian 1990s authors — as one of his former colleagues, Valerii Popov, recalled, “[Dovlatov] replaced all of us” (from Ryzhova).

Zona is a novella of fourteen independent episodes recounting the lives of prisoners and their guards based on Dovlatov’s personal experience serving at a penal colony in a small town of Chiniavoryk in the Komi Republic in 1962-65. The narration is structured as an alternation of the prison camp episodes with semi-fictional letters from the author to the publisher of the current edition Igor Efimov.

In the opening letter to Efimov, the author confesses that it is particularly important for him to publish these memories because that’s when his “ill-fated writing began”. However, he continues, he was unable to find a publisher in America for several years because “the prison camp theme had already been exhausted by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Varlam Shalamov” even though “Solzhenitsyn describes political camps. I’m describing criminal camps. Solzhenitsyn was a prisoner. I was a guard. For Solzhenitsyn, the camp is hell. I think hell is ourselves.” He also notes that since it was legally impossible to take the original text out of the USSR, he photographed the typewritten sheets on microfilm and gave them to his French acquaintances. After receiving the microfilm in the United States, the novelist spent a long time reconstructing the manuscript; he however admits that some fragments were completely lost.

In this humorous though sometimes morbid collection of stories, Dovlatov reveals that a prison guard is as much a victim of circumstances as the prisoner: as Viacheslav Kuritsyn notes, Dovlatov discovered “the striking similarity between the prison camp and freedom”.

This appealing copy is inscribed to Iraida Vandelos-Legkaia, a Latvian-born Russian poetess, translator, journalist and radio presenter at the “Voice of America” (1963 –1987). Dovlatov and Vandelos in many ways were colleagues: he was one of the founders and an editor-in-chief of Novyi amerikanets [The New American] newspaper and also a presenter at “Radio Svoboda” [“Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty”] where he very likely had several interview-collaborations with Vandelos.

Provenance

Iraida Vandelos-Legkaia (1932-2020; manuscript dedication from the author on title).

Bibliography

Varvara Ryzhova, “Sergei Dovlatov. Zapovednik”, Polka academy, 2020; Iurii Saprykin, Varvara Babitskaia, Lev Oborin, “Solo na diktofone” // Radio svoboda, 2021; Viacheslav Kuritsyn. Russkii literaturnyi postmodernizm. OGI, 2011; Aleksandr Genis, Dovlatov i ojrestnosti // Novyi mir, 1998, #7.