The decade of the 1980s divides neatly into two equal halves. Over the first half hung the shadow of the gloomy “period of stagnation” which is rightly associated with the name of Leonid Brezhnev, one of the most dull-witted and predatory political figures of this century.

Brezhnev wanted to be a writer. In 1978–79 he published his auto-biographical sketches Malaya zemlya (the name given to a portion of the Kerch Peninsula, scene of fierce fighting during World War II, where Brezhnev was a political commissar), Rebirth (Vozrozhdenie), and Virgin Lands (Tselina). Although they were nothing more than brochures written in bureaucratese by ghostwriters, Brezhnev was immediately honored with a Lenin Prize, the highest Soviet literary award. Moreover, the literary journals and papers in Russia outdid one another in extolling the author of this “trilogy,” holding up his talent as an example for all, exclaiming over his brilliant metaphors, his vivid epithets and similes, and his lively dialogue. Moscow and Leningrad writers would gather for solemn discussions of the Brezhnev “trilogy” in obedience to party command.

Is it any wonder that so-called “secretarial literature” flourished luxuriantly at precisely this time? If everybody agreed that the country’s leading writer was the incredibly mediocre and perhaps even only semi-literate General Secretary of the party Central Committee, then what was to prevent the various Secretaries of the Union of Soviet Writers from publishing their writings in multi-volume editions? To be sure, Brezhnev exercised such unlimited power that he could award himself a Lenin prize, while the secretaries of the Writers Union could not do as much – but still they controlled such publishing houses as “Soviet Writer,” “Artistic Literature,” and “Young Guard.”