Relational Strategies of Resilience: Underground Journals in the Soviet Union (1956-1990)

José Luis Estévez, University of Helsinki
Stoyan Sgourev, New Bulgarian University

Connecting the literatures on resilience and paradox, we develop a dynamic approach to resilience that conceptualizes it as a relational process with paradoxical features. Our substantive focus is on how tensions between stability and adaptation are manifested and managed in social networks. The research context is underground (“samizdat”) journals in the Soviet Union, where a community of practice emerged in the mid-1950s to organize self-publication. Resilience in our context is the capacity to withstand state repression through enduring operations. Our dataset catalogs 304 journals founded between 1956 and 1986. Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) and Cox survival models attest to two relational strategies addressing opposite imperatives of stability and adaptation. The first strategy pursues network exclusivity and reliability, reflected in the tendency to form ties with geographically and temporally proximate journals, in thematic homophily, scarcity of ties between political and non-political journals, and triadic closure. The second strategy pursues network extension and responsiveness by publishing in multiple locations and shifting editorial responsibilities in response to security threats. A dynamic balance between the two strategies bolstered resilience vis-à-vis state repression. However, tensions between the strategies endured, and the dynamic local balance ultimately proved globally imbalanced as political democratization of the Soviet Union accelerated. The paper exposes the dynamic, relational, and intrinsically contradictory nature of resilience.

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 Presented in Session 3. Media and Technocracy