When I saw "Classics Group Read" I got excited for a moment because I assumed it meant "classical Latin or ancient Greek"---ah well.
My grandparents were really into Russian novels (in Russian, which they were fluent in), but iirc I've never really read one in full. My grandfather was once forced to type all of War and Peace during his physics PhD in a failed attempt to get him to learn to spell correctly (barbarous times).
EmperorMagus, on 01 June 2017 - 12:54 AM, said:
I don't know why you guys are looking to buy the book.
It's in the public domain and you can easily find great translations of it online (and its legal). Buying it is just letting publishers profit for no reason off dead people's work.
Is it? "
An extreme example is Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita: the work was first published posthumously in 1966. At that time, the Soviet copyright term of then 15 years p.m.a. had already expired as Bulgakov had died in 1940. The new Russian copyright law from 1993 placed this work under copyright again, because the 50-year term was calculated from 1966 on. [...] On August 8, 2004, the copyright law of Russia was amended by federal law no. 72-FL, by which the general copyright term was extended from 50 to 70 years. This term extension applied only to works that were still copyrighted in Russia in 2004."
https://en.wikipedia...sian_Federation
That's not even factoring in the copyright on translations into English.
According to this convincing-looking legal blog, the original and all translations and adaptations are *not* public domain in the US.oA:
"Unlike the United Kingdom, the United States does not follow the rule of the shorter term.
The Master and Margarita entered the U.S. public domain when it was originally published in Russia and France in the late 1960s because the U.S. had no copyright relations with the Soviet Union. However, its U.S. copyright was automatically restored on Jan. 1, 1996 under the Uruguay Round Agreement Act and it is entitled to a full term of U.S. copyright protection. This term is 95 years from the year of first publication. So if it was first published in 1966, the novel will remain under copyright in the U.S. through the end of 2061. You'll need to get permission from Bulgakov's heirs to use it in an opera. Be sure to do so, they are litigious bunch. They recently filed an unsuccessful suit against a U.S. publisher that published an e-book version of an English translation of the novel.
See Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc. v. Shilovskaya, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 45887 (SDNY Marc 31, 2014)."
http://dearrichblog....arita-into.html
Granted, the suit was unsuccessful---but the publisher had probably already acquired the rights to publish a physical book, just not an ebook.
But I don't think Bulgakov's heirs---litigious as they may be---will sue you over using the links to free translations (and Russian texts---I like the one with English on the left and Russian on the right, between Google Translate and the dictionary it's probably not that hard to read).
However, if you live in the EU, it apparently became public domain in 2011 (at least it did in (nonclassical) Italy): "
Brunella Schisa explains that right after the 1st January 2011 deadline -- also known as Public Domain Day -- several Italian publishers will launch new translations of such masterpieces as "The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov [...] Why? Simple: according to Italian law, authors' copyright expires 70 years after their death (1940), so everybody is free to re-use their works in any fashion and format. And, guess what?, both the public and the market are craving for new versions of such classics of the world literature."
https://communia-pro...-margarita.html
Who is the heir of Bulgakov? Apparently, "the grandson of Bulgakov's third wife Elena Sergeevna Shilovskaya claims, as a self-assigned heir, the rights on Bulgakov's literary inheritance" and he has successfully sued to prevent adaptations of Master and Margarita in Russia and USo.A, at least as recently as 2015:
"I am a Russian composer and without this opera being performed in Russia my happiness can never be complete, though unfortunately due to the demands of Bulgakov's heir, Mr Shilovsky, the chances of this opera being staged in Russia are zero. For the same reasons, a performance of the opera at the Metropolitan Opera planned for 2015 has been cancelled.
Interestingly, Bulgakov himself dreamed that one day someone would write an opera based on the novel's plot. The archives of the Bolshoi Theatre, where he earned some extra money reworking libretti, hold a letter in which he wrote openly of this. At present the famous Parisian lawyer André Schmidt is working with Shilovsky and me. This work is progressing extremely slowly, though I believe that in the end it will all work out. As I said to the lawyer,
A Dog's Heart was once "arrested" on ideological grounds; the second time the reasons are economic. They can't be allowed to laugh at us in the West – they say that Russians can't even agree among themselves.
The idiocy of copyright law today is such that you can't take some lines without the permission of the writers' relatives who are, at times, very remote from literature and music and are interested only in money."
https://www.mariinsk...rom_raskatovym/
So Bulgakov's heir seems to be a tyrannical, money-grubbing plutocrat. And, according to a 2015 article in Foreign Policy, the other heirs are Putin and his cronies ("The Rise of Bulgakov Diplomacy"):
"Belatedly, it appears, Russia has perceived the value of soft diplomacy to shore up the nation’s reputation overseas and is buttressing this underused resource. [...] that this projected series, conceived to inform and enlighten Western readers, may also serve to buttress Putin’s aims makes some people wary — including some supporters of the Russian Library. One of the participating scholars, speaking on condition of anonymity, explained, 'The problem here is that, despite the very noble nature of the project, which is long overdue and timely and necessary, the Russian authorities are using it to make a good face. And that’s why I am split. I don’t want to add my two pennies to the Kremlin bank.'"
http://foreignpolicy...in-read-russia/
Putin apparently uses Master and Margarita as pro-Christian (and post-truth) propaganda:
'"It's a very complicated novel, and people get what they want out of it," Haber says. "One thing that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and the people of present-day Russia support is the Christianity that was attacked during the communist period. Those people who are very pro-church pick that out, whereas most readers look at the anti-authoritarianism of it."'
http://www.npr.org/s...in-stalins-time
That could explain why Bulgakov's heir hasn't sued Wikipedia to take down the external links to free full texts of Master and Margarita, which are illegal in the U.S.oA and Russia: the Kremlin thinks Ма́стер и Маргари́та may be a полезные дураки.
This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 01 June 2017 - 05:02 AM
JPK 
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