Are the American Publishers of Solzhenitsyn To Be Silenced?

Recently the Soviet Union announced that it proposed to adhere to the “Uniform Copyright Convention,” an international agreement by which the signatories recognize one another’s copyrights. This adherence was presented by some newspapers as a magnificent step forward toward detente—the Soviet Union was now willing to pay royalties to foreign, even capitalist, authors on the sales of their books in the Soviet Union; some such sales have been very large.

A less enthusiastic and somewhat cynical view was expressed in other quarters; it was noted that the payment of royalties by the Soviet Union was only one side of the coin; the other was that the United States, and indeed, the other countries of the free world, would become bound to respect the copyrights of the Soviet Union. Now the best works of Soviet writers published in the free world have not been published at all in the Soviet Union; manuscripts have been smuggled out to Western publishers who have proceeded to publish without contract with the authors. Dr. Zhivago, The First Circle, The Cancer Ward, August 1914, and many others fall into this category. The Soviet Union not being a party to the Copyright Convention, neither the author nor the Soviet government has been able to stop such publication. But as in the Soviet Union the government is the owner of—or can readily acquire —the copyright to all the literary work of Soviet writers, then by reason of adherence of the Soviet Union to the Copyright Convention, the Soviet government will now, it might appear, be in a position to prevent the publication of Soviet writers’ works in the United States.

CW

About the Author

C. Dickerman Williams

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Manage following

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Intellectual Property

Literature

Supreme Court

William F. Buckley Jr.

Recently the Soviet Union announced that it proposed to adhere to the “Uniform Copyright Convention,” an international agreement by which the signatories recognize one another’s copyrights. This adherence was presented by some newspapers as a magnificent step forward toward detente—the Soviet Union was now willing to pay royalties to foreign, even capitalist, authors on the sales of their books in the Soviet Union; some such sales have been very large.

A less enthusiastic and somewhat cynical view was expressed in other quarters; it was noted that the payment of royalties by the Soviet Union was only one side of the coin; the other was that the United States, and indeed, the other countries of the free world, would become bound to respect the copyrights of the Soviet Union. Now the best works of Soviet writers published in the free world have not been published at all in the Soviet Union; manuscripts have been smuggled out to Western publishers who have proceeded to publish without contract with the authors. Dr. Zhivago, The First Circle, The Cancer Ward, August 1914, and many others fall into this category. The Soviet Union not being a party to the Copyright Convention, neither the author nor the Soviet government has been able to stop such publication. But as in the Soviet Union the government is the owner of—or can readily acquire —the copyright to all the literary work of Soviet writers, then by reason of adherence of the Soviet Union to the Copyright Convention, the Soviet government will now, it might appear, be in a position to prevent the publication of Soviet writers’ works in the United States.