Reading and Recycling: The Soviet Paper Debate and Makulatura Books, 1974-91

This article examines the joint makulatura campaign of 1974–91 by the Soviet Supply Committee (Gossnab) and the State Committee for Publishing (Goskomizdat), a campaign in which readers could exchange collected wastepaper for vouchers to obtain the popular and otherwise unavailable titles of the makulatura book series. Through analysis of the debate in Literaturnaia gazeta on the perceived waste and shortage of printing paper, the official campaign instructions, and the changing “editorial” paratexts of the makulatura books, the article sheds light on the public negotiations about the campaign and the value and reuse value of paper and reading matter in late Soviet society. By materializing the abstract relation between paper and books, the makulatura experiment turned both paper scrap and books into collection items and readers into paper suppliers. This materialization gave both readers and writers a marked awareness of paper as a raw material and a medium of cultural production. However, the shift of readers from the receiver to the producer side of the textual communication circuit also implied a collision of logics from the different perspectives of authors, collectors, publishers, and supply agencies.