Testimony (book) - The Original Manuscript

The Original Manuscript

The original typescript of Testimony has never been made available for scholarly investigation. After it was photocopied by Harper and Row, it was returned to Volkov who kept it in a Swiss bank until it was "sold to an anonymous private collector" in the late 1990s. Harper and Row made several changes to the published version, and illicitly circulating typescripts reflect various intermediate stages of the editorial process.

Despite translation into 30 different languages, the Russian original has never been published. Dmitry Feofanov in 1997, at the local meeting of the AMS demonstrated how publishing contracts customarily vest copyright and publication rights in a publisher, and not an author. Assuming Volkov signed a standard contract, he would have no say whatsoever in whether an edition in this or that language appears; such decisions would be made by his publisher.