Notes from the Underground: Indie Publishing in Putin's Russia
  By Daniel Kalder - Publishing Perpectives


 MOSCOW: Back in 1993 a group of philosophers from the Russian Academy of Sciences formed Ad Marginem Press in Moscow. Their plan was simple: to publish translations of late 20th century Western philosophy that had been unavailable in the USSR, alongside works of contemporary Russian fiction. After 70 years of totalitarianism Russians were hungry for new ideas and even though the country was faced with catastrophic economic and social problems, Ad Marginem's publisher, Alexander Ivanov, assessed the business situation as "far from hopeless."
(read on ...)    

Does Literature Still Have the Power to Irritate Powers-that-be?
By Edward Nawotka, Editor, Publishing Perpectives
 

In today's lead story Daniel Kalder writes about Russia's Ad Marginem Press, a "underground" publisher of controversial and politically provocative works of fiction and nonfiction.

Ad Marginem publisher Alexander Ivanov says the press may have something of an advantage in attracting an audience, in so far as "literature [in Russia] may still -- as it did in the '50s and '60s in the West -- play the role of a social and cultural 'irritant.'"

(read on ...)