Of Copyrights and Commissars

...There are signs that the Soviet authorities are beginning to pay attention to this line of thought...

...In all probability, they would not even be able to read the scholarly Current Digest of the Soviet Press, for it would have ceased to exist: Newspapers and magazines, too, are protected by copyright...

...There is, then, a good economic reason why the Soviet Union has been reluctant to sign the Universal Copyright Convention...

...The motivation of American publishers and writers, on the other hand, is as unambiguous as it is shortsighted...

...Is this a fanciful exaggeration...

...Let us assume that a Soviet novel, critical of some aspects of Communist life and Communist society, is published in a limited edition in the USSR...

...As the contracting party, this branch of the Soviet government will exercise all of the author's prerogatives...

...Indeed, that is putting it too mildly...

...Because the Soviet Government is not a signatory to the Universal Copyright Convention, foreign publishers and authors receive not a penny in royalties (except in occasional, and unpredictable, instances...

...It would make sense if American publishers and writers were to try to establish some kind of bilateral arrangement with the Soviet Union, covering only the reciprocal payment of royalties-even, if necessary, paying a larger royalty to them than they would to us, so that the burden on Soviet foreign exchange reserves would not be too great...

...It would also do a disservice to the most enterprising (and therefore least orthodox) Russian writers...

...There will then be no American edition...

...If they are ultimately persuaded, and if they then sign up, many American publishers and authors would be handsomely rewarded...

...The size of some of these editions, most notably of textbooks but also of popular novels, is enormous...

...I don't believe they have the faintest idea of what they are letting themselves in for...

...The Russians established a French organization, run by Communists and fellowtravelers, to deal with French publishers...

...And if any qualification is needed, that can be summed up in two phrases: (a) Lots of it, and (b) to which they have an excellent moral claim.' More than 500 American scientific, technical and professional books-plus a couple of hundred books of diverse character-are translated and published in the Soviet Union each year...

...Nevertheless, the subject is of no mean importance...

...So it is not surprising that there should be considerable dissatisfaction with, and agitation against, such a state of affairs...

...But the conduct of certain kinds of business between an open society and a closed one can be every bit as tricky as the conduct of military or political affairs between them...

...It can be summed up in one word: Money...

...But actually to invite the USSR to obtain control over the publication and distribution of its literature abroad-this is the kind of farce that so often precedes a genuine tragedy...

...Last year the French repealed their law...

...The truth is that these views are directly at odds with those of the entire American publishing industry...

...Except in the rarest instances, they will not be able to sign with the Soviet author directly...

...Against it, however, is the argument-ever more strongly pressed by American publishers-that any Soviet economic sacrifice would be more than compensated for by "an improvement in the Soviet image" among influential and articulate Americans...

...In addition, Soviet adherence to the Universal Copyright Convention could be a serious blow to the American academic community and to all those with some kind of professional interest in Soviet affairs...

...The French experience would seem to indicate that it is not...

...In part, they did so because the Russians still obstinately refused to reciprocate by paying royalties to French publishers and authors on translations into the Russian...

...Since there is no copyright protection, a Soviet book with the prospects of a good sale is likely to be published by more than one house...

...It would cost it a lot of money -and in hard currency, to boot...

...It is beginning to look as if this campaign might be victorious...

...What motivates our State Department in this affair is not entirely clear...

...This may not be the only reason, but it is almost certainly the most important...

...It worked horribly...

...What it beyond doubt, however, is that the State Department has never given the American public the slightest hint of the complications that would result in this country from Russia's official acceptance of the international copyright regulations...

...Perhaps, too, it has some kind of misty notion about inching the Soviet regime toward an acceptance of "the rule of international law...

...Finally, such piracy in a competitive society runs disagreeable risks...

...For one thing, the quantities involved are not nearly commensuratethere is simply not that large a market for Russian books in this country...

...One such prerogative, of course, is the decision to publish at all...

...and I think it desirable that we should have controversy before the event, rather than after...

...Are American publishers prepared to face such a scandal in this country...

...For another, most American publishers, being honorable men, do try to pay royalties, or at least set them aside for eventual paymenteven though such royalties go to a branch of the Soviet government rather than to the individual Soviet writer...

...They were mysteriously delayed until the Party line had softened...

...I don't believe in truth they are...

...Another reason for the repeal was General de Gaulle's irritation at the fact that, not only had he never received royalties on the Russian translation of a volume of his memoirs, but the preface to the volume in question was disagreeable and some sections unflattering to Russian sensibilities were deleted...

...If they are signatories of the Universal Copyright Convention, the Soviet authorities will be free to decide that an American edition is undesirable...

...There was only one French edition of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (the sole country where this was the case) and it contained a preface by Pierre Daix, who-until Khrushchev's Secret Speech-had for years stoutly denied the very existence of concentration camps in the Soviet Union, and who edits a Communist literary journal...

...The main reason the French acted as they did, however, was that the whole situation had become intolerable and had given rise to a public scandal...

...That would be very nice-but one would quickly discover that a lot of other consequences would not be nearly so nice...

...The event I am referring to is the possibility that the Soviet Union will sign the Universal Copyright Convention-a possibility that has been made less remote by Moscow's recent adherence to the international treaty covering industrial patents...

...During the six months from January 1964 through June 1964, when "modernism" was under attack by the Soviet authorities, translations of Soviet "modernists" were not delivered to French publishers who had contracted for them...

...And it is my conviction that this victory would represent a moral disaster for the American intellectual community and, eventually, for the publishing community as well...

...French law has always ~een zealous in protecting the legal rights of foreigners, and up until last year it prescribed that French publishers had to behave as if Russia were a signatory to the copyright convention- that is, they had to deal with accredited Soviet representatives and organizations, pay royalties to them, and so on...

...For many years now, American publishers-and our State Department too-have been urging such a course upon the Soviet authorities...

...Presumably it has acted, to some extent, merely as an official spokesman for and rep" resentative of a group of American businessmen and writers who have a legitimate grievance against a foreign government...

...This organization chose the translators and provided "suitable" editorial material: If one French publisher balked there was always another with an eye on the main chance...

...If the Soviet Union signs the Universal Copyright Convention, then all American publishers who wish to bring out an American edition of a Soviet book will have to sign a contract with the Soviet international book agency, Mezhdunarodnayn Kniiga, or with an American subsidiary of this organization, for the title in question...

...Now as it happens, because there are so many more Frenchmen than Americans who are sympathetically curious about the Soviet Union, translations from Russia have a larger sale in France than in the U.S...

...So France, as a test case, is anything but eccentric: The Russians had a great deal at stake, and one can assume the American experience would not be much different from the French...

...Since most Soviet experts here have views on Communism and the Soviet Union that would never receive official Soviet approval, they would find themselves unable to do any translating from contemporary Russian works or to edit anthologies of Soviet writings...

...Nor is this dissatisfaction significantly tempered by the fact that American publishers, on their part, are equally at liberty to pirate Soviet books...

...THINKING ALOUD Of Copyrights and Commissars By Irving Kristol I must make it clear, at the very outset, that my views on this matter are not to be imputed to the publishing house with which I am associated...

...To them, it seems a simple question of commercial propriety...

...How did the experiment work...

...There were four translations, and four rival American editions, of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich...