Abstract
Vazif Meilanov (b. 1938), a mathematician and author of the samizdat book In the Margins of Soviet Newspapers, was arrested in January 1980 for demonstrating in defence of the exiled physicist Andrei Sakharov. Meilanov was sentenced to 7 years in a ‘strict regime’ camp and 2 years in exile for ‘anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda'; a further conviction while he was in camp added an extra 6 months to his sentence. Glasnost and Sakharov's release notwithstanding, Meilanov is still serving his term of exile in the remote settlement of Namtsi in the Verkhnevilusky region of Yakutia, Siberia.
It was there, in the local library, that he attended a bizarre public discussion on Children of the Arbat by Anatoly Rybakov (see preceding article: Glasnost bestseller), Meilanov's lively account of this discussion, published here in an abridged version, first appeared in Russian in the Paris newspaper Russkaya Mysl.