One Barrier at a Time

At every stage of the strange and intoxicating process the Soviets called glasnost , Western observers were careful to note that the process had its limits. “Sure, such-and-such has been published,” they would say, “but Alexander Solzheni-tsyn’s ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ is still taboo.” This one work, it seemed, was the barrier that marked the limits of glasnost. Last week, the barrier fell.

Sergei Zalygin, editor of the journal Novyi Mir , told a Soviet weekly that the entire three-volume work would be published by a Moscow publishing house. His own journal had already announced plans to publish excerpts. And, he said, there was a movement afoot to bring the exiled writer home to the Soviet Union. “We’ll start by publishing ‘Archipelago,’ ” he said. “Such is the author’s will.”

Why is the publication an anticlimax? Have we simply grown used to the idea that was formerly impossible in the Soviet Union is now possible?

Maybe. But we also have come to understand that glasnost was the easy part. Publishing forbidden books requires only a handful of editors. Perestroika , the complete overhaul of the Soviet system, requires the cooperation and effort of the country as a whole. Perestroika is the difficult part. And perestroika’s barriers are still so far in the future that it is hard even to see them, let alone to put names to them.