ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the overwhelming role of literature in Russian social as well as cultural life, both before and since the advent of cinema and television. In 1994 Bulat Okudzhava won the Booker Russian Novel Prize for The Closed-Down Theatre. Towards the end of 1975 Parastaev gave a farewell party for Yevtushenko at his smart diplomatic flat in Warwick Gardens. Eventually it was Charles Snow who introduced Yevtushenko and, to ensure that the event was staged professionally, Peter James agreed to direct it. At a few days’ notice the Soviet authorities cancelled a visit to Moscow by Sir Charles Curran, the BBC’s director-general. On 1 May 1976 The Guardian reported Sir Charles’s opposite number at Gosteleradio saying ‘The BBC television programme on April 27 on Solzhenitsyn’s slanderous book confirms once again that the BBC continues with cold-war tactics and encourages libellous attacks against our country’.
