Smuggling and Samizdat: Accessing Censored American Art Writing in the USSR

This paper examines the strategies used to access censored texts about American art in the Soviet Union in the era of the Cold War. As part of this investigation, I will also explore the influence these texts had on the artists who read them, and the implications of this restricted knowledge and its reliance on copies and reproductions. What was lost or added during the translation process? What new meaning was invested in certain forms of American art through its suppression? This discussion will focus on key artworks that evidence the effect that clandestine American art writing had on the development of dissident Soviet artistic practices. The paper will uncover secret translations of essays about American art in the form of samizdat, a term for self-published texts that were written or typed by hand and circulated person-to-person to evade the Soviet censors. It will also focus on rare and highly-prized original books and magazines, which were brought into the USSR by visiting artists, curators and students under the cover of official exchange. Despite the censorship, some Soviet libraries had permission to collect Western art writing, although the material was largely unavailable. I will also consider those moments when these publications were briefly uncensored, and assess the ramifications for this opening and closing of access to writing on American art. This paper will be largely developed from archival documentation and conversations with artists of the period.