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СИРЕНА, "The Siren" in English, is a samizdat journal produced in 1962 in Moscow. Two different issues of this samizdat were produced and five total copies were issued. These were sent to Riga and Leningrad. СИРЕНА was edited by Mikhail Kaplan and illustrated by Vitalii Komar, but poetic works found in the issues are a joint initiative from members of the “Maiakovtsy” group.
СИРЕНА is a collection of poetry and illustrations about life in Russia in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Evidently, the nature of some of the works found in the samizdat were socio-political. In fact, some of the less overtly socio-political literary items from ФЕНИКС, another samizdat journal, were chosen by Kaplan to insert in СИРЕНА. Thus, СИРЕНА was less about denouncing, but more about sharing art.
Both issues of СИРЕНА are quite similar. No dimensions could be found, but both issues seem to have a similar size and seem to have a standard pocket journal size. The title page for both are decorated with the same colours: black, yellow and red. These colours remind us of the Soviet Union's flag. СИРЕНА was written on a typewriter. There are no marginal annotations. It reinforces the idea that СИРЕНА was about sharing art. Several illustrations are found in the journal. These range from very poignant illustrations, like the illustration of a boy walking down a street facing an authority figure with a firearm, to more abstract illustrations, like the print of a foot accompanied with lines and letters.
