YMCA Press

The original function of the YMCA Press was to provide textbooks and other literature (often on religious subjects) for prisoners of war in Europe,[1] amongst whom it was felt there was a thirst for education.[3] The increase of Russian immigration into the continent after the Russian revolution appeared to create a market for reproducing similar texts that Russians would easily have found at home, particularly technical and scientific works. However, this plan has been described by one modern commentator as "too grandly conceived and poorly administered" to succeed, whilst the original strategy of concentrating on selling textbooks failed to make an entry into the new market as the émigrés "did not buy that kind of literature." Further, hopes of the YMCA Press entering the Russian domestic market itself were dashed when their production of Russian-language versions of Göschen's until then ever-popular series of scientific pamphlets failed to make an impact in the 1920s. Likewise, the press found itself financially encumbered by its large stock of unsold textbooks.[1]

The Press moved its base to Paris in 1925, and began to concentrate on philosophical and religious works, as well as printing the journals of the St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute, Pravoslavnaia mysl (Orthodox Way) and the Spiritual Philosophical Academy, Put (The Way).[1] The latter became "an integral element" of the company's output.[4] One of the first books to actually carry the imprint of the YMCA Press was Aleksandr Semonovich Iashchenko's anthology of contemporary Russian religion, and this marked the first shift from publishing textbooks to religious pieces.[3] A combination of entering the market for publishing fiction, as well as the subsidy provided the press by its parent company, enabled it to establish itself as the primary source of intellectual literature for European Russians[1] in the longer term.[3] Indeed, many of the works published by the YMCA Press were written by members of the émigré community, which gave the Press a "sense of unity and coherence."[5] As a result, it has been said, "Russian philosophy flourished in the émigré community for decades" after 1917. Although as a result of the revolution, the Press and its authors were hardly known in Russia at all,[6] it was later described as being responsible for preserving the memories of the émigrés.[7]

Between 1900 and 1940 the YMCA Press was led by Julius Hecker, Paul B. Anderson, and Nikolai Berdyaev; they were followed, at the end of World War II, by Donald Lowrie, Ivan Morozov and Nikita Struve. the latter three were American, and did not, it has been suggested, "share the persepctive and experience" of their predecessors. Moreover, they saw the religious-philiosophical strategy of the Press as "alien and irrelevant." As a result, Paul Anderson managed to transfer ownership of the Press into the hands of the Russian Student Christian Association.[5] The YMCA Press operated into the twenty-first century, although, as has been said, with a "different financial basis and with a more openly religious orientaion."[1] One of its most famous publications was in 1968. This was the first unabridged version of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward, and was followed in 1973 (for which it received "worldwide attention") by his three-volume Arkhipelag Gulag, 1918–1956, which sold 50,000 copies in its first few weeks of sale. In 1975, Solzhenitsyn visited the company's Parisian office, where he met the staff, received an invitation to the United States by Anderson, and presented the latter with a book. This Solzhenitsyn had inscribed, thanking Anderson for "how much he ha[d] done for Russian culture."[8] The Nobel Laureate, in his memoirs later, described the Press as "selfless."[8]