Ilya Kukuj

Kuzminsky was one of the central figures of Leningrad unofficial literary stage. Even before his emigration, he had compiled a number of anthologies from his rich literary and artistic archive of the Soviet underground. After moving to the United States in 1976, Kuzminsky taught for a short time at the University of Texas in Austin and together with John Bowlt founded the Institute of Modern Russian Culture at the Blue Lagoon which gave its name to Kuzminsky's Anthology. In 1981 Kuzminsky moved to New York where he founded his own gallery and the eponymous “Podval” (The Cellar) publishing house. It changed several addresses, the last of which was in his own house in Lordville, PA. Kuzminsky’s literary archive is now stored at the Amherst College Center of Russian Culture. This edition is based on archival seminars held at Amherst in 2017 and 2018, and focuses not only on the history of the Anthology and the personality of its compiler, Konstantin Kuzminsky, but also on the work of its authors, on the late Soviet underground and the third wave of Russian emigration.