How Soviet scientific books became an artifact from physicists and engineers in India

In 2012, a fire broke out in the northeast of Moscow. An old building with wooden beams caught fire, the fire quickly spread to the neighboring houses. Fire brigades could not get close to the place - all the parking lots around were filled with cars. The fire covered one and a half thousand square meters. It was also impossible to get close to the hydrant, so the rescuers used a fire train and even two helicopters. One Emergencies Ministry officer died in the fire.

As it turned out, the fire began in the house of the publishing house "Mir".
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It is unlikely that this name says something to most people. Publishing and publishing house, another ghost from Soviet times, which for thirty years did not release anything, but for some reason continued to exist. At the end of zero it was on the verge of bankruptcy, but somehow it returned debts to whomever and what it should have been there. His whole modern history is a couple of lines on Wikipedia about a leapfrog between all sorts of state-owned MGUP ShMUP FMUP, which are gathering dust in Rostec's daddy (if you believe Wikipedia, again).

But behind the bureaucratic lines there is not a word about what a great legacy the “World” has left in India and how it has affected the lives of several generations.

A few days ago, patientzero threw off a link to a blog where they post digitalized Soviet scientific books. I thought someone was turning nostalgia into a good cause. It turned out to be true, but a couple of details made the blog unusual - the books were in English, and the Indians discussed them in the comments. Everyone wrote about how important these books were to them in childhood, sharing stories and memories, saying how great it would be to get them in paper now.

I googled, and each new link surprised more and more - columns, posts, even documentaries about the importance of Russian literature for the people of India. For me it was a discovery, which is now ashamed to say - I can not believe that such a large layer has passed by.

It turns out that Soviet scientific literature has become a kind of cult in India. Books that have disappeared disgracefully in our publishing houses are still worth their weight in gold on the other side of the world.

“They were very popular because of their quality and price. These books were available and in demand even in small settlements - not only in large cities. Many were translated into various Indian languages ​​- Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati and others. It greatly expanded the audience. Although I am not an expert, but I think one of the reasons for reducing the price was an attempt to replace Western books, which were then very expensive (and even now too), ”Damitr, the author of the blog, told me. [ Damitr is an acronym for the author’s real name, which he asked not to disclose. ]

He is a physicist by training and considers himself a bibliophile. Now he is a researcher and teacher of mathematics. Damitr began collecting books in the late 90s. Then they were no longer printed in India. Now he has about 600 Soviet books - some he bought from hands or from second-hand bookshops, some were given to him. “It was much easier for me to study with these books, and I want as many people as possible to read them too. That's why I started my blog. ”

How Soviet books came to India

Two years after the Second World India ceased to be a colony of Great Britain. Periods of great change are always the most difficult and hot. Independent India turned out to be full of people of different views, who now had the opportunity to move the foundations to which they consider it necessary themselves. The world around was also ambiguous. The Soviet Union and America were trying to reach, it seems, to every corner to lure into their camp.

The Muslim population separated and founded Pakistan. The border areas, as always, became controversial, and war began there. America supported Pakistan, the Soviet Union - India. In 1955, the Prime Minister of India visited Moscow, Khrushchev paid a return visit that same year. So began a long and very close relationship between the countries. Even when India was in conflict with China in the 1960s, the USSR officially remained neutral, but financial aid for India was higher, which somewhat spoiled relations with the PRC.

Because of the friendship with the Union in India, there was a strong communist movement. And then the ships with tons of books went to India, and to us - kilometers of film reels with Indian cinema.

“All the books came to us through the Communist Party of India, and their funds from the sale replenished their funds. Of course, among other books, there was a sea and a sea of ​​volumes of Lenin, Marx and Engels, and many books on philosophy, sociology and history were rather biased. But in mathematics, in sciences, bias is much less. Although, in one of the books on physics, the author explained dialectical materialism in the context of physical variables. I will not say whether people were skeptical about Soviet books at that time, but now most of the collectors of Soviet literature are left-leaning centrists or frankly left-wing ”.

Damitr showed me several texts of the Indian “Left-leaning edition” The Frontline dedicated to the centenary of the October Revolution. In one of them, journalist Vijay Prashad writes that interest in Russia appeared even earlier, in the 20s, when the Indians were inspired by the overthrow of the tsarist regime in our country. Then communist manifestos and other political texts were clandestinely translated into Indian language. At the end of the 1920s, the books “Soviet Russia” by Jawaharlal Nehru and “Letters from Russia” by Rabindranath Tagore were popular among Indian nationalists.

Not surprisingly, the idea of ​​revolution was so pleasant to them. In the position of the British colony, the words "capitalism" and "imperialism" by default had the same negative context that the Soviet government laid in them. But after thirty years, not only political literature became popular in India.

Why in India so fond of Soviet books

For India, they translated everything that we read. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Chekhov, Gorky. A lot of children's books, for example, “Deniskins stories” or “Chuk and Huck”. It seems to us that India, with its ancient rich history, is plagued by mysterious myths and magical stories, but it was the realism, everydayness and simplicity of Soviet books that bribed Indian children.

Last year in India, the documentary “Red Stars Lost in the Fog” about Soviet literature was filmed. The directors paid the most attention to children's books, on which the characters of the film grew. For example, Rugvedita Parah, an onco-pathologist from India, spoke about her attitude in the following way: “My favorite Russian books, because they do not try to teach. They do not indicate the moral of the fable, as in Aesop or Panchatantra. I do not understand why even such good books as our mother-in-law “Syama” should be full of cliches ”.

“They were distinguished by the fact that they never tried to treat lightly or down on the personality of the child. They do not insult their intellect, ”said psychologist Sulbha Subrahmanyam.

Since the beginning of the 60s, the publishing of books has been engaged in publishing foreign literature. Later it was divided into several separate. “Progress” and “Rainbow” produced children's and fiction literature, political non-fiction (as it is now called). The Leningrad Aurora published books on art. Pravda Publishers published a children's magazine, Misha, where, for example, there were fairy tales, crosswords for learning Russian, and even addresses for correspondence with children from the Soviet Union.

Finally, the publishing house "Mir" produced scientific and technical literature.



“Scientific books, of course, were popular, but mostly among people who were especially interested in science, and there are always a minority of them. Perhaps the popularity of Russian classics in the Indian language (Tolstoy, Dostoevsky) also helped them. Books were so cheap and distributed that they were perceived almost disposable. For example, in school lessons, pictures were cut out of these books, ”says Damitr.

Deepa Bhashti writes in his column for The Calvert Journal that while reading scientific books, people knew nothing and could not find out about their authors. Unlike the classics, often these were ordinary employees of research institutes:

“Now the Internet has told me [where these books came from], without a single hint of the authors, of their personal stories. The Internet has not yet told me the names of Babkov, Smirnov, Glushkov, Maron, and other scientists and engineers of state institutions who wrote textbooks about things like airport construction, heat transfer and mass transfer, radio measurements, and much more.

My desire to become an astrophysicist (until he was beaten off by a physicist in high school) came about because of a little blue book called Cosmos in Your Home by F. Rabiza. I tried to find out who Rabiza is, but there is nothing about him on any Soviet literary website. Apparently, I should have enough initials after the last name. Authors' biographies may not have been of interest to the homeland they served. ”

“My favorite were the books of Lev Tarasov,” says Damitr, “His level of immersion in the subject, her understanding, was incredible. The first book I read, he wrote with his wife Albina Tarasova. It was called "Questions and Answers in School Physics." There, in the form of a dialogue, many misconceptions from the school curriculum are explained. This book has clarified a lot to me. The second book I read with him is The Basics of Quantum Mechanics. In it, quantum mechanics is considered with all mathematical rigor. There is also a dialogue between the classical physicist, the author and the reader. I also read his "This amazing symmetrical world", "Discussions about the refraction of light", "A world built on probability." Each book is a pearl, and I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to pass them on to others. ”

How to keep the book after the collapse of the USSR

By the 1980s, there were an incredible amount of Soviet books in India. Since they were translated into many local languages, Indian children literally learned to read native words from Russian books. But with the collapse of the Union, everything stopped abruptly. By that time, India was already in a deep economic crisis, and the Russian Foreign Ministry said it was not interested in a special relationship with New Delhi. From this point on, the translation and publication of books in India ceased to be subsidized. By the 2000s, Soviet books had completely disappeared from the counters.

Just a few years was enough to almost forget Soviet literature, but with the massive spread of the Internet, its new popularity began. Enthusiasts gathered in communities on Facebook, corresponded in separate blogs, searched for all the books that could be found, and began to digitize them.

In the film “Red Stars Lost in the Fog,” among other things, they told how modern publishers took up the idea of ​​not just collecting and digitizing, but officially republishing old books. At first they tried to find copyright holders, but they could not, so they began simply to collect the surviving copies, to translate what was lost again, and to launch into print.


Shot from the film "Red Stars Lost in the Fog."

But if fiction could be forgotten without support, the scientific remained still in demand. According to Damitra, she is still in circulation in academic circles:

“Many professors and teachers in universities, recognized physicists, recommended me Soviet books. Most of the engineers who are still working in our time, learned from them.

Today's popularity is due to the very difficult IIT-JEE engineering exam. Many students and tutors simply pray to the books of Irodov, Zubov, Shalnov and Volkenshtein. I'm not sure whether Soviet art and children's books are popular with the modern generation, but “Solving the main problems of physics” by Irodov is still recognized as the gold standard. ”


Workplace Damitra, where he digitizes books.

Nevertheless, the preservation and popularization - even of scientific books - is the occupation of a few enthusiasts: “As far as I know, only a couple of people except Soviet books collect me, this is not a very common occupation. Every year there are less and less books in hard covers, after all the last of them were printed more than thirty years ago. Fewer and fewer places where Soviet books can be found. Many times it seemed to me that the book I was finding was the last existing copy.

In addition, the very collecting of books is a dying hobby. I know very few people (despite the fact that I live in academic circles) who have more than a dozen books at home. ”

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Books by Lev Tarasov are still being republished in various Russian publishing houses. He continued to write after the collapse of the Union, when they were no longer transported to India. But I do not remember that his name was widely popular with us. Even search engines on the first pages give out very different Lviv Tarasovs. I wonder what would Damitre think about this?

Or what publishers would think if they found out that Mir, Progress and Rainbow, the books of which they want to print, still exist, but it seems only in registers of legal entities. And when the publishing house "Mir" was burning, his book heritage is the last question that was discussed later.

Now in every way belong to the USSR. I myself have a lot of contradictions about him. But for some reason, writing and admitting to Damitru that I did not know anything about it was somehow embarrassing and sad.