Chalidze Publication is the Publishing House Founded by V. N. Chalidze in the USA

Abstract

For the first time, the activities of the Chalidze Publication post-war publishing house have been reconstructed. It was created by the famous human rights activist and emigrant of the third wave Valery Nikolaevich Chalidze (1938–2018) in the USA from 1978 to 1991. Previously, the activities of this publishing house have not been covered in the book studies literature. First time ever, an overview of the history of Chalidze Publication has been given. The publishing house operated in New York, then in the city of Benson (Vermont). A brief biography of its director and owner V. N. Chalidze and the history of the predecessor publishing house, Khronika Press, are given. The features of the historiography of the topic are briefly analyzed. The history of the Chalidze Publication publishing house is reconstructed for the first time. A thematic and typological analysis of the publishing products is given. The main trends and features are revealed in comparison with books and brochures of other publishing houses of Russian emigration. The features of the Chalidze Publication editions and the reasons for focusing on a reduced format are shown. The reasons for the main shortcomings in the publishing house’s work when publishing printed products are revealed. The main topics in the publishing house were the history of the USSR, the history of Menshevism and Trotskyism, unjustified repressions in the Soviet Union, the work of banned writers and poets, philosophical, economic and legal works, and numerous memoirs about life in the homeland. In general, the subject matter of V. N. Chalidze was reduced to publishing everything banned in the USSR. The authors of following books were especially successful: N. S. Khrushchev, L. D. Trotsky, N. Valentinov, L. M. Alekseeva, R. A. Medvedev, L. Martov, L. K. Chukovskaya, V. K. Bukovsky, G. P. Fedotova, S. Kierkegaard, F. Nietzsche, Z. Freud, J. Eichenwald, J. Aleshkovsky, A. Koestler.