Samizdat and the Extra-Gutenberg Condition

LEV RUBINSHTEIN—librarian, poet, essayist, and innovative verbal artist associated with Moscow Conceptualism—talked about how he understood the character of his avant-garde art.¹ He said: “For myself, avant-gardism always meant the extremely conscious unofficial status of my (and my friends’) situation and existence in local culture. Moreover, I mean unofficial status conceived as aesthetics and poetics.”² Rubinshtein’s conception of what the avant-garde meant in his context resonates with what Aksenov said about the avant-garde as a tradition outside of the official Soviet mainstream. For Rubinshtein, reflecting on these topics during perestroika, the avant-garde also entailed awareness of a specifically