The aim of the Union was to achieve party and state control in the field of literature.
For professional writers, membership of the Union became effectively obligatory, and non-members had much more limited opportunities for publication.
The result was that exclusion from the Union meant a virtual ban on publication.
Thus, Vasily Aksyonov, Semyon Lipkin, and Inna Lisnyanskaya left the Union of Writers in a show of solidarity after the exclusion of Viktor Yerofeyev and Yevgeny Popov in punishment for self-publishing.
It was issued in English, French, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Polish, Czech, and Slovak editions.