Literary Translation for New Soviet People: Anglophone Literature in Soviet Latvia of the 1950s−1960s

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Soviet regime tended to play a crucial and decisive role in the transformation of people’s values. Latvia was subjected to different types of oppression, restriction and control and, as regards translation policy, was dependent on Moscow’s position. To grasp the scale of imperative activities – both conspicuously visible and masterfully veiled – taken by the regime authorities to ensure ideological indoctrination of society, institutional, individual and socio-cultural domains are to be examined and analysed. The present work studies, as an indispensable part of the translation policy implemented under the Soviet rule, important external structures of text – interpretation, facts – as represented in forewords and/or afterwords of Latvian publications of Anglophone literature issued in the years of 1953–1964, during the Khrushchev’s time, which can be characterised by the acute confrontation in the Cold War. To mould Latvians into New Soviet People – collectivistic, patriotic, loyal to the Communist Party – various channels to address the society were exploited. By applying the postcolonial perspective, culture-historical approach, and comparative method the research focuses on examining the ways the translated literature was manipulatively presented and represented in Soviet Latvia aimed at being included in the narrative of constructing a New Soviet Person.