Hand-Picked

Moscow had big literary news: Soviet citizens are going to get more to read this year than ever before. If the state-owned presses stay on schedule, 1947 will be the biggest year in Russian publishing history: 23,000 titles, totaling 430,000,000 copies, in the Soviet Union's 100-odd languages and dialects. Every book is fit for Russian eyes and minds: Glavlit, the Government bureau in charge of such things, had seen to that by hand-picking each title.

No publishing risks are involved in Glavlit's grandiose program. Well practiced in mind conditioning, the Government has given top paper priorities to books and newspapers, determines how many copies of each book are to be printed and where distributed. Reader demand by itself can no more create a best-seller in Russia than public tastes can alter the content of the food ration. But popular writers sometimes get spectacular receptions, which indicate that Glavlit can guess wrong. For example, a 15,000-copy printing of Valentin Kateyev's Son of the Regiment lasted just three hours in Moscow bookshops.

U.S. writing will reach Soviet readers in small, carefully measured doses this year. Considered safe for reprinting are the works of Washington Irving, O. Henry, Jack London and Communist Theodore Dreiser.

Only living U.S. authors to make the grade: John Steinbeck (a reissue of The Grapes of Wrath), Upton Sinclair (the Lanny Budd cycle), Ralph Ingersoll (Top Secret), Elliott Roosevelt (As He saw It), Erskine Caldwell, whose short stories about the seamy side of Southern life will top all other U.S. offerings with a 100,000-copy edition. Said the director of one Moscow publishing house last week: "We didn't see anything else that would interest Soviet readers."

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