Mobilisation of Literature: The Construction of Ideology in Soviet ‘Defence’ Magazines

Abstract

At the turn of the 1930s, a cultural project of defence literature emerged in the USSR, implemented by the Literary Association of the Red Army and Navy (LOKAF) under the supervision of the Political Directorate of the Red Army. The circumstances in which the idea of defence literature emerged were closely related to the historical and political context of the era of the “Great Break”. The authors of defence literature were both professional and amateur writers from the literary circles of the Red Army and the Navy. In their texts, they interpreted and adapted the ideological attitudes of the authorities and offered what they considered to be “politically correct” models of behaviour. Critics of the LOKAF evaluated the ideological correctness of these texts and formulated programme guidelines for writers. The article deals with the works published in the pages of the Zalp and LOKAF magazines in 1930–1932 in order to reveal the connection of the chosen themes with the current domestic and foreign policy agenda, the writers’ reception of ideological clichés about the aggravation of internal and external contradictions, class struggle, wrecking, mastery of technology, etc., as well as the images of Red Army soldiers, party leaders, internal and external enemies created in the works.