Grossman, V. [Everything flows: A story] Vsyo techyot: povest’. Samizdat of banned book.

Grossman, V.  [Everything flows: A story] Vsyo techyot: povest’.

Samizdat, [1970s - early 1980s]. 8 vo (295 x 210 mm), 120 leaves. Typescript.

Bound in cloth; cut to fit the binding. Taped on page 1; rubbed, lightly dirtied. Owner’s marginalia on front endleaf and title page. Overall in good condition.

The original manuscript of Grossman’s Everything flows was confiscated by the authorities along with his well-known anti-Stalin work Life and Fate. The latter, however, was copied and taken abroad years later, while the original Everything flows was truly lost, and the author had to rewrite the entire thing. Finished in 1963, it was kept hidden until its first publication in Frankfurt in 1970. Its illegal, self-published copies spread through the Soviet Union long before it was officially permitted to be published in 1989. This typescript is one of such copies.

It was unusual for publications of that size to be printed independently. Samizdat was mostly used for short banned stories and/or Silver Age poetry one couldn’t purchase in store; later works of Bulgakov and lyrics of popular modern bards.