Babi Yar: A Document in The Form of A Novel - History

History

Kuznetsov began writing a memoir of his wartime life in a notebook when he was 14. Over the years he continued working on it, adding documents and eyewitnesses testimonies.

The novel was first published in 1966 in what Kuznetsov would later describe as a censored form in the Soviet monthly literary magazine Yunost in the original Russian language. The magazine's copy editors cut the book down by a quarter of its original length and introduced additional politically correct material.

In 1969 Kuznetsov defected from the USSR to the UK and managed to smuggle 35-mm photographic film containing the unedited manuscript. The book was published in the West in 1970 under a pseudonym, A. Anatoli. In that edition, the edited Soviet version was put in regular type, the content cut by editors in heavier type and newly added material was in brackets. In the foreword to the edition by the New York-based publishing house Posev, Kuznetsov wrote:

"In the summer of 1969 I escaped from the USSR with photographic films, including films containing the unabridged text of Babi Yar. I am publishing it as my first book free of all political censorship, and I am asking you to consider this edition of Babi Yar as the only authentic text. It contains the text published originally, everything that was expurgated by the censors, and what I wrote after the publication, including the final stylistic polish. Finally, this is what I wrote."