FANTASY AND REALITY IN ABRAM TERC''S EARLY PROSE

In February 1966 the Soviet writer Andrej Sinjavsky was sentenced to seven years of forced labour for making anti-Soviet propaganda. The alleged propaganda appeared in the form of fantastic prose fiction which had been published in the West under the pseudonym Abram Terc. This study is focused on the writings that figured as the principal corpora delicti during this once notorious trial. Terc''s fantastic writings which abound in playful and sinister nonsense can be read as an indication of what impossibly could be said in the Soviet Union, or to be more precise, in what form it was forbidden to write in those days.