Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Episode Title: Bradley A. Gorski, "Cultural Capitalism: Literature and the Market After Socialism" (Northern Illinois UP, 2025)
Air Date: September 19, 2025
Host: Maria Lipman
Guest: Dr. Bradley A. Gorski

Overview

This engaging episode centers on Bradley A. Gorski’s book, Cultural Capitalism: Literature and the Market After Socialism. The discussion explores the dramatic transformation of Russian literary culture following the collapse of the Soviet Union, focusing on the interplay between literature’s storied traditions and the turbulent emergence of a capitalist book market. The episode delves into the anxieties, challenges, and adaptations encountered by writers, publishers, and readers as Russian literature navigated the post-Soviet commercial sphere, and considers the long-term impact on the literary field up to contemporary Russia.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Encounter with Russian Literature and Entry into the Field

• Gorski shares how reading Nabokov's Lolita in high school inspired his study of Russian, citing Nabokov’s lament—“my private tragedy... is that I had to give up my rich, untrammeled, and infinitely docile native tongue for a second rate brand of English.”

“If this book that I just got done reading, if this is second rate, then I have to read him in Russian.” (03:01, Bradley Gorski)

• A deepening interest in contemporary Russian literature led Gorski to immerse himself in post-Soviet literary events and reviews.

“I became fascinated at least as much with these aspects of literature beyond the text.” (04:22, Bradley Gorski)

2. The Cultural Impact of the Soviet Collapse

• Lipman underscores the relative neglect of the cultural angle compared to political and economic analyses.
• Gorski details how Russian literature, unlike sectors attempting to "catch up" with the West, maintained unique anxieties about balancing great literary traditions with the new market-driven publishing industry.

3. The Transformation of the Book Market: From Central Planning to Chaotic Capitalism

• Initial explosion: From 200 state-controlled publishers to thousands of private publishers within a few years.
• The abruptness and disarray of the post-Soviet market disrupted established systems, exposing the “invisible” mechanics behind book production.
• Gorski quotes publisher Buddy Stein’s reflection on the transition:

“Thus ended the serene time of the great independence...The time of the great bacchanali of the book market began.” (14:22, quoting Buddy Stein)

4. Early Post-Soviet Book Market: Avalanche of Literature and Piracy

• The 1990s saw an overwhelming glut of literature, spurred by both pent-up demand from the "journal boom" under glasnost and the influx of pirated and translated mass-market works.
• Example: Piracy was rampant, with anticipated titles “stolen” and reproduced ahead of official publication, as with the sequel to Gone with the Wind.
• Many Russian writers, supported by Soviet-era structures, were left underemployed as translated and commercial literature surged in popularity.

5. The Advent and Russianization of the Bestseller

• Russian publishing borrowed the mechanical form of Western bestseller lists (i.e., New York Times) but adapted them, including unique sub-lists such as "intellectual bestsellers" based on select Moscow bookstores.

“My favorite difference is that the Russian bestseller lists also included a sub-list that I’ve never seen anywhere else...a list of intellectual bestsellers.” (29:55, Bradley Gorski)

• These lists attempted to accommodate both mass-market sales and preserve a space for "serious" literature but ultimately subsumed all output under the logic of the market.

6. Fiction Content: The Market as a Theme in Literature

• Gorski analyzes how writers grappled with market success:
  • Market “success” and “selling out” became a topic for literary negotiation—a collision between literary value and capitalist appeal.
  • Detective fiction by Lev Gursky (Rahman Arbitman) and more serious authors like Boris Akunin blend pulp and prestige, staging their own internal negotiation between literature and commerce.

“They are constantly sort of navigating between these two traditions. And I argue...they try to sort of externalize that collision that they feel in their everyday lives into these works in really interesting ways...” (37:07, Bradley Gorski)

7. Sociological Shifts: The Russian “Success Story”

• Citing the late sociologist Boris Dubin:

“One of the phenomena in the current Russian literature is that there appears, there is appearing a Russian version of the American success story.” (38:34, Maria Lipman)

• The “success” ideal swiftly permeated pop culture and literature, a pattern echoed in phenomena like the notorious MMM investment company ads—propagating capitalist optimism while masking destructive realities underneath.
• Dubin also warns against overvaluing the “failures” of literary history, encouraging balanced attention to both commercial and artistic achievements.

8. Case Study: Zakhar Prilepin and the Failure of Cultural Capitalism

• Prilepin’s trajectory—from acclaimed writer to figurehead of pro-war “Z-literature”—exemplifies the ultimate failure of hopes for a market-driven, pluralistic cultural sphere.
• Gorski contrasts Prilepin’s embrace of “violent transcendence” with the utopian alternatives advanced by leftist writers (e.g., Alexander Skidan).

“Prilepin is an extraordinarily talented writer, an extraordinarily talented self promoter and an extraordinarily odious human being.” (48:56, Bradley Gorski)

9. Market Consolidation and State Capture

• The wild, chaotic publishing boom of the 1990s gave way to ruthless consolidation through mergers and acquisitions.
• By 2012, a near-monopolistic system emerged—Exmo and ASTE merged, controlling over half the Russian publishing market, with the remaining dominated by state-aligned entities.

“When there’s a full scale invasion in 2022 and you need to take undesirable authors off the market, it is very convenient to have a single monolithic monopoly…” (58:14, Bradley Gorski)

• Market mechanisms, initially intended to insulate against authoritarianism, instead enabled governmental control over literature as political repression increased.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the unrealized potential of capitalism-fueled literary culture:

  “Capitalism, free market capitalism, should not be compatible with authoritarianism… And it’s only, you know, 30 years later and we see that in fact, authoritarian governments have no problem creating a symbiotic relationship with capitalism in exactly the way it developed in these states.” (58:52, Bradley Gorski)

• On the “great independence” of Soviet publishing:

  “The independence of print runs from the reader, of prices from the cost of paper, of author, payments from content. The time of the great independence had ended and the time of the great bacchanali of the book market began.” (14:24, quoting Buddy Stein)

• On the contradictory hopes of the early 1990s:

  “This coincidence between demand for great literature and the beginnings of market reasoning...allowed the literary intelligentsia to buy into this kind of utopian fantasy of market capitalism that…readers would finally be free to demand great literature, right? Of course, this isn’t how it turned out.” (24:19, Bradley Gorski)

• On violence and the longing for transcendence:

  “The disposition of capitalism, when everything can be converted into everything else, everything is subject to replacement, activates a longing for something absolute that cannot be turned into a commodity. All totalitarian structures play on that longing.” (49:44, quoting Alexander Skidan)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:50–04:22 — Gorski’s introduction to Russian literature via Nabokov and post-Soviet immersion
• 07:12–09:17 — Literary tradition vs. attempts to “catch up” in the book market
• 12:20–16:14 — The chaos of the early-1990s publishing market
• 18:01–19:39 — Publisher boom and bust in the 1990s
• 21:44–24:59 — The late Soviet “journal boom” and the first emergence of market demand
• 28:46–31:10 — Russianization of bestseller lists, including “intellectual bestsellers”
• 32:08–37:07 — Content changes: detective fiction, the “success story,” and literary genre blending
• 38:34–43:44 — Boris Dubin, the culture of success, and the influence of mass media
• 47:01–51:15 — Zakhar Prilepin, leftist responses, and the commodification of violence
• 53:00–58:40 — Market consolidation, the rise of a publishing monopoly, and entanglement with authoritarianism

Conclusion

Gorski’s Cultural Capitalism offers a nuanced and compelling account of Russian literature’s ongoing negotiation with late 20th and early 21st-century capitalism. The book and interview chart the grand visions, everyday challenges, and ultimate ironies of the literary marketplace after socialism—a story at once distinctively Russian and strikingly relevant for cultural industries worldwide.

For Further Reading & Listening:

• Bradley A. Gorski, Cultural Capitalism: Literature and the Market After Socialism (Northern Illinois UP, 2025)
• Boris Dubin’s essays on culture and sociology
• Alexander Skidan’s work on art and capitalism