The article analyzes the texts in and about the magazine “Zuboskal” (literally – “The Sсoffer”), self-published in 1934 by its author, 26-years-old engineer Leonid Molchanov. The magazine was used as physical evidence against Molchanov and his readers, a small circle of friends and neighbors from Saltykovka, a village near Moscow.
Molchanov’s file from 1935 is kept in the State Archive of the Russian Federation among the materials on rehabilitated Muscovites and residents of the Moscow region. In 2018, the research group discovered his work and has since been trying to determine how to proceed: should it be republished in its original form?
Can the investigative material serve as its commentary? Or, on the contrary, are the texts of the magazine themselves a commentary on the work of the investigation? How can a critical and microhistorical analysis of both texts be arranged? Is the new phase of the “Zuboskal”’s life, after the revision of the results of the political investigation, a form of rehabilitation?