In 2021, Slavic scholar and professor Yakov Kloss of Hunter College at the City University of New York (CUNY) completed a large-scale academic study of the history of Soviet tamizdat. Kloss viewed dissident texts from past waves of emigration as a historical monument of the era of closed borders. However, Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 turned an archival subject into everyday reality: total censorship and self-censorship returned to the Russian Federation, and Russian free literature found itself in exile once again. Kloss then transformed his research project into a system for publishing books and supporting researchers and students. According to him, they are engaged in documenting the anthropology of the new exodus from Russia. "Novaya Gazeta Europe" met with Yakov Kloss in New York to discuss contemporary uncensored texts, the destruction of institutional bridges, and the pitfalls of historical analogies. Illustration: Rina Lu / "Novaya Gazeta Europe." How a scientific project turned into a charitable "mushroom network" - When you study the "Tamizdat Project" (Tamizdat Project) through its website and social media, you get the impression of incredibly dynamic development that began in 2022. You have built an entire ecosystem: an electronic archive, a publishing house, public events, and charity. How did this happen, and why did this surge occur then? - Initially, it was exclusively a scientific project. I wrote a book about tamizdat. The text was completely ready before 2022, but the book was published in English in 2023, and the Russian edition appeared in 2024. In early 2022, I was teaching, and the regular semester began. A month later, the full-scale war started. The internal state – a mixture of shock, anger, confusion, and energy – demanded some immediate outlet. And naturally, the realization came: we have a duplicate of the first edition of Anna Akhmatova's "Requiem" (Munich, 1963) in our collection. What if we sell it and use the proceeds to help Ukrainian students who were just arriving in New York in those weeks? Hunter College was one of the first to accept them, building a special program in just two weeks – primarily for students from Ukraine, but also from Russia and Belarus. Our charitable activities began with that auction. If it weren't for the war, the "Tamizdat" project would never have become a full-fledged organization, however that may sound. After all, administration and conducting auctions are, to put it mildly, not my main job. I teach, I write books. I probably do that better than I organize charity auctions. But now it's already 2026. In four years, the initiative has grown in various directions. You called it an "ecosystem"... You know, somewhere deep underground, all these directions are connected by roots. It's not always noticeable on the surface that our various initiatives are parts of the same mushroom network. Yakov Kloss. Photo from his personal Facebook page. - If you were to describe this "mushroom network" in its entirety, what does it include today? - Firstly, a physical library and an electronic archive. Secondly, public events in New York for a wide audience, which we have been holding for about ten years. Thirdly, volunteers and interns from various parts of the world. Fourth, scientific activities, conferences, and summer schools. And finally, publishing and two major charitable campaigns that we have conducted to date. The first took place in 2023, and the second in 2025. - Your 2023 campaign was written about quite a bit, but we would like to highlight the results of the 2025 auction in more detail. How was it organized? - Our second major auction closed exactly one year ago, on May 18, 2025. Although our work is not limited to specific auction dates, the 2025 campaign was much larger than the previous one. In 2023, everything was driven by student enthusiasm, and we acted blindly. By 2025, the project remained largely student-led in spirit, but looked different visually and structurally. The main thing is that the 2025 campaign became absolutely international. On the final day of the auction, May 18, offline events were held simultaneously in eight cities around the world: Tbilisi, Paris, Prague, Berlin, London, Vilnius, and New York. New York, due to the time difference, concluded this marathon. We focused on the geography of the authors. Over 100 writers and poets specifically signed their books for the auction. Those who could not be present in New York held local events where they were. For example, Linor Goralik held an event in Tbilisi that day, not in Tel Aviv, where she usually lives. The prominent [Lithuanian poet and human rights activist] Tomas Venclova performed in Vilnius. About eight authors gathered in Berlin at once – this city has now become the largest hub for new emigration. All these venues were connected by live streams on our YouTube channel, which can still be watched. The central event unfolded in New York. We rented a church building and organized a broadcast. There was a large program: Psoy Korolenko opened the evening with a concert, Lena Kostyuchenko came specially from Boston, Polina Barskova read her texts, and Oleg Lekman gave a brilliant mini-lecture on "The Adventures of Kurochka" – a fairy tale that has historically migrated across all state borders. Yakov Kloss. Photo from his personal Facebook page. - What are the financial results of these campaigns? Who specifically received this money? - We maintain transparent reporting, constantly send out newsletters, and publish reports on social media. In 2023, we raised around $46-48 thousand. After deducting minimal organizational expenses, we distributed 20 scholarships of $2,000 each. At that time, these were only undergraduate students at American universities. Approximately 17 or 18 scholars were from Ukraine, and two or three from Russia. Surprisingly, no one applied from Belarus. In 2025, we raised less money. We faced an obvious reality: more than four years after the start of the full-scale war, there was significant psychological fatigue and lack of funds in the diaspora. While emigration participated phenomenally actively in fundraising in 2023, by 2025 we could no longer rely on it to the same extent. We had to shift the focus to the American public. As a result, in 2025, we were able to award 16 scholarships of $2,000 each. However, we expanded the scope: we began accepting applications not only from undergraduates but also from graduate students, and not only in the USA but also in Europe. "We observe a difficult dynamic: the number of people who desperately need help is not decreasing, it is only increasing. But the opportunities to support them are shrinking. There is no direct correlation between the project's media reach and the amounts raised. People objectively have less money, many other terrible problems have arisen, and new wars have erupted. The tragedy in Ukraine has long ceased to be front-page news in The New York Times, and for New York, this is a critically important marker that determines public sentiment and willingness to donate money. The Birth of a Publishing House - In your project, a book is the minimal unit of meaning. How did you come to create your own full-fledged publishing house? - The publishing house came about completely by chance. It all started with Andrei Sinyavsky's short story "Phents" from 1957. This small text – only 15 pages – is unique not only for its time but also today, in my opinion, yet it has never been published as a standalone book. In English, it only existed in an old translation from 1966. Meanwhile, I teach "Phents" in almost every university course: when we talk about prison narratives, when we analyze the phenomenon of emigration, and even in the context of 19th-century literature, it unexpectedly fits (for example, when reading Gogol's "The Overcoat" with students). My colleague, the brilliant translator Ainslee Morse, was obsessed with this text since her student days. Thus, our first book was born – a very beautiful bilingual flip-book: on one side the Russian original, turn it over, and you have the English text. After "Phents," there was a break of almost a year. The next book was Linor Goralik's "Exodus-22." This was a documentation of burning modernity. Linor published these texts on her website hot off the press, but I felt that in Russian alone, this book would not have sufficient impact outside the diaspora. We translated and published it phenomenally quickly – in just two months. Then came "Phents" in Armenian, translated by Sona Mnatsakanyan (this is the first translation of Sinyavsky-Tertz into Armenian ever). And then – Evgeny Ostashevsky's collection "Alphabet Soup." This is an English-language book dedicated to children's multilingualism. After the very difficult "Exodus-22," it's a kind of respite – an incredibly sweet, funny text that you want to read curled up under a blanket, shedding tears not of sadness but of laughter. - Your poetry series appears very selective and conceptual. How is the work in it structured? - To date, two books have been released in the poetry series. The first was a bilingual edition of Tomas Venclova's late poems. Here's a personal story: I was his last graduate student at Yale University, Tomas is my teacher, and my interest in Lithuania and the Baltics was largely shaped by him. The project turned out to be amazing: it's a Lithuanian-Russian edition, not Lithuanian-English, of which Tomas has many. Venclova is a monumental figure for late Soviet and post-Soviet culture. These are simply beautiful poems, and I really wanted to publish this book. "Landscape with Polyphemus" by Tomas Venclova. Photo from Yakov Kloss's Facebook page.The second book in the series is Polina Barskova's "Red Book." This is a Russian-language edition – or rather, the second edition of the collection, which was originally published in St. Petersburg in early 2024. But since then, Polina has been declared a foreign agent. This was the main reason to print the book here. But it's not just a reprint: we restored a couple of censored passages that had to be made in Russia. This summer, we are preparing two or even three more books for publication and hope to release them in September. Book Corner on the Upper West Side - You opened the Tamizdat Project Book Corner in the space of the "White Rabbit" bookstore. How did this idea come about, and why does New York, which seemingly has the internet and delivery, need a physical space with Russian books? - For the past two autumns, I have essentially lived in Europe, primarily in Berlin. Berlin today is a bubbling cauldron of the new, fifth wave of emigration. There are several Russian-language bookstores, fairs, endless presentations, and a cultural life built around so-called "new tamizdat" books. When I returned to New York, I keenly felt the contrast. America is much slower to react, and the critical mass of new emigration reaches here with more difficulty due to visa and geographical reasons. There were no spaces with current Russian-language books in New York. There are two children's bookstores: "White Rabbit" and "Kvartira." Although adult events were and are held in both. "I wanted to bring not just a random selection of books to New York, but a curated repertoire. We wanted to present the most important texts – both "new tamizdat" and the best that, despite everything, continues to be published by independent Russian publishing houses. Opening a full-fledged independent bookstore in New York from scratch is an almost utopian task. Renting a tiny commercial space in this city starts at $8-10 thousand per month. Our project, which exists thanks to volunteers, does not have such funds; we cannot even pay a salary to a separate employee who would solely manage the store. But the founders of "White Rabbit," Misha and Masha, allowed us to join them and gave us a corner. Moreover, they built very nice wooden shelves for us. Tamizdat Project Book Corner in the "White Rabbit" bookstore. Photo: Misha Levit / Tamizdat Project / Instagram. - What is the target audience for this book corner? Do Americans come in, or is it an exclusive club for insiders? - The Upper West Side neighborhood, where we are located, is perhaps the most reading-conscious neighborhood in New York. People here are accustomed to coming into bookstores directly from the street. Currently, about a third of our inventory consists of books in English, and we plan to expand this line over the summer. It's clear that there's little point in selling translations of classics (they are already available everywhere), but we feature key headliners of the modern book world who have English translations (e.g., Elena Kostyuchenko's book). If an American intellectual wants to understand what is happening within the Russian-speaking diaspora, how it reacts to the tragedy of the war – their options are severely limited. No more than 4% of "new tamizdat" has been translated into foreign languages. Tamizdat, Samizdat, and Gosizdat - If we project the classic Soviet triad of terms onto our current reality, which of these is viable, and which has changed irrevocably? - Gosizdat, in its pure, distributive Soviet sense, does not exist today in Russia. Today's independent publishing houses in the Russian Federation, even those operating under severe pressure, are still private initiatives. Samizdat has acquired a new technological dimension. If we look at the circulation of texts, the first publication of a poem or political essay on Facebook or Telegram is modern "samizdat." The electronic format works to overcome geographical barriers thousands of times better than printed sheets passed hand-to-hand in the USSR. But the paradox is that digital samizdat retains a key characteristic of its Soviet ancestor: a limited, hermetic, niche audience living within a specific information bubble. - And what about tamizdat? In your research, you distinguish between emigrant literature and tamizdat. What is the difference today? - This is a fundamental point, in my opinion. In a geographical and historical sense, tamizdat is a phenomenon directly opposite to emigrant literature. The key marker of tamizdat is that the text crosses the state border, while its author remains within the metropole where the text cannot be published. Akhmatova's "Requiem," printed in Munich, is classic tamizdat because Anna Andreevna lived in Leningrad but could not get "Requiem" published in the USSR during her lifetime. If we look at today through this lens, we will see that true tamizdat is alive. There are many authors who, for various reasons, remain within Russia, write there, but send their texts for publication to foreign independent publishing houses, often under pseudonyms or anonymously. But, as before, "new tamizdat" primarily consists of publications by authors who have already emigrated, i.e., who have for some time found themselves in the same jurisdiction and geography where their books are published. Yakov Kloss. Photo: Misha Levit / Tamizdat Project / Instagram. The Pitfall of Historical Analogies and the Anthropology of Exile - When we look at the events after 2022, historical parallels constantly surface in the public space. Everyone immediately started talking about a repeat of the catastrophe of a century ago. Why is this analogy between the first and current waves of emigration so firmly entrenched in public consciousness? How valid are these comparisons? - This is an astonishing phenomenon. We see literal, frightening coincidences. The announcement of partial mobilization in Russia in 2022 coincided almost to the day with the departure of one of the "philosophical пароходы" (steamships) from Petrograd – September 29, 1922. Did Putin calculate this date? Unlikely, it sounds absurd. But one must understand: this is not a historical parallel, it is a mythological parallel. It is a "rhyme" that arises in the space of poetry and myth, not history. Myth, according to Lévi-Strauss, is a spiral, not a straight line of history. From this rhyme, all modern memes about the "philosophical scooter" or "philosophical airplane" of 2022 have grown. As a researcher, I am now interested not so much in dry history or pure literary criticism, but in the anthropology of this state. I myself am in a specific position: I did not leave Russia in 2022 with one suitcase under threat of prison or mobilization. I left much earlier, on a student visa, for postgraduate studies – first to Boston, then to Yale University. I observe this process simultaneously from the inside and outside. To reflect on the anthropology of exile, my colleagues and I are currently preparing a large anthology of essays from the first wave of emigration from a century ago for publication. We called it "Why Are We Here?" – after the essay of the same name by philosopher Georgy Fedotov. This book clearly shows how, over 15 years – from 1924 to 1939 – a grandiose assertion turned into a painful question. We open the collection with Ivan Bunin's pathetic speech "The Mission of Russian Emigration" (February 1924), where a rigid, messianic position of exile is manifested: we have carried true Russia with us, we will preserve culture. And we close the anthology with an essay by Yuri Rapoport, a publicist almost forgotten today, "The End of Abroad," published in July 1939, literally two months before the start of World War II. It states that the very idea of "abroad" as an alternative state without territory turned out to be a utopia and failed. - What is the main difference between the current, fifth wave and the first one? - The differences are fundamental, although human anthropology is such that we always find it easier to notice surface similarities and rhymes than to delve into deep differences. "Firstly, the first emigration fled from a total, destructive Civil War within their own country, not from their country's external aggression against another sovereign state. Secondly, there is a technological abyss. In the 1920s, as throughout the Soviet period, contact with the homeland was completely and irrevocably severed. Today, thanks to the internet, we are in a situation of continuous, constant communication with those who have remained. And thirdly, it is the structure of identity. Yes, within the fifth wave, there is a basic consensus: anti-war sentiments, rejection of the Putin regime, support for Ukraine. But within it lie a huge number of profound internal divisions (which erupted, for example, against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), dividing the diaspora into separate groups. Here, a deep psychoanalytic and anthropological analysis of society as a living organism is needed to understand the trajectory of this exodus. - In your book, you write about the subversive power of tamizdat, how it was used as a powerful political lever in Soviet times. Can a book today become a soft power capable of influencing global politics, as it was during the Cold War? - Times have changed. During the Cold War, dissident publications were supported institutionally: by foundations, universities, and sometimes intelligence agencies. Today, there is no such large-scale support. The role of the paper medium has also changed. If Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago" had been published today simply in epub or Print on Demand format, it would not have become the tectonic shift it was in 1974. - Today's "Gulag Archipelago" would only become an event if it were released as a Netflix series. - Exactly. As well as most novels in general. The book today has lost the sacred status it had in the times of Herzen or Solzhenitsyn. But we continue to make paper books. A paper book is still a time-fixed event. We cannot directly measure the influence of books; we lack distance. We simply want to continue doing our work. We translate texts into English not to entertain the Western reader with tales of the horrors of Putin's prison. Each such book is a call to action. If a book draws attention to an author who is currently in prison, perhaps it will increase their chances of being included in exchange lists? And for that, it is worth continuing.