ABSTRACT
The career, practice, and principles of Andrei Sinyavsky/Abram Tertz present a polar opposition. Indeed, the very conception of Tertz as reported in his latest book, Spokoinoi nochi, strengthens such a supposition. Spokoinoi nochi describes how, after the judicial proceedings had ended, Sinyavsky was sustained by the thought of the book he might eventually write, unrelated to his trials. Pushkin had suggested as much in a famous lyric, The Poet, and it is that idea that Tertz made the basis of his Strolling with Pushkin, another of the books written in Dubrovlag, sent out in the guise of letters, and published in Paris to cries of outrage from emigre critics. Tertz’s disquisition on the anekdot—the jokes that Soviet Russians tell each other, perhaps the most significant new art form produced by Soviet culture and one whose function shows clear parallels with that of medieval carnival—emphasizes its freedom, which consists exclusively in the transgressing of boundaries and limits.
