Tarusa - "Tarusa Pages"

"Tarusa Pages"

In 1961, Konstantin Paustovsky fought to publish the famous book almanac “Tarusa Pages” (Russian: Тару́сские страницы), which became the only book in the Soviet Union which escaped Moscow-based central party censorship and offered its pages for various free-thinking and dissident writers. After the book was published, it was declared ideologically injurious and removed from all book-stores and libraries. The director of the Kaluga publishing house was eprimanded, editor in chief was fired, other repressions were to follow, and only Paustovsky‘s personal appeal to Khrushev stopped the wave of planned repressions which were being prepared and worked out in detail in the CPSU Central Committee. This attempt of publishing free literature in the USSR under Khrushev became just as aborted and inconsequent as all Khrushev’s anti-Stalinist reforms. Still, the “Tarusa Pages” became a significant and meaningful event in the Soviet literature. The book introduced to the public such authors as Bulat Okudzhava, Vladimir Maximov, Frida Vigdorova, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Naum Korzhavin, who later became extremely popular and half-legendary figures.