612 Reviews intentmay have a polemical element, but her writing and argumentation aremea sured and underpinned by a secure and detailed grasp of her material. This book is an important contribution toTsvetaeva studies, and its examination of an over looked aspect of thepoet's work should provoke many readers to return to the texts itdiscusses, open tonew insight and wary of categorical judgements. UNIVERSITY OF EXETER KATHARINE HODGSON Aesthetics ofAlienation: Reassessment ofEarly Soviet Cultural Theories. By EVGENY DOBRENKO. (Northwestern University Press Studies inRussian Literature and Theory) Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. 2005. XX+I52 pp. $79.95. ISBN 978-0-8IOI-2025-9. Aesthetics ofAlienation is offered to the English-speaking audience as a sequel to Evgeny Dobrenko's two larger studies of early Soviet culture, The Making of the State Reader and TheMakingof theState Writer (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, I997, 2000). In the introduction the author himself describes the trajectory connecting his earlier work to this latest volume: after considering the formation of Socialist Realism firstfrom the side of the consumer, then from the side of the pro ducer, one more side remains to complete the triangle of the literary process. The 'missing link' is thatof literary theory and criticism,whose 'sociology' Dobrenko sets out toexplicate. 'Without it,the sociology of literaturecannot be considered complete: between thewriter and the reader exists amost significant cultural institution,which under Soviet conditions had itsown specifics. In fact, the idea for thisbook was born out of necessity to determine the social parameters of theaesthetic debates' (p. xiii). Neat as this sequential progression appears, Aesthetics ofAlienation stands as an odd piece among Dobrenko's publications. Those familiarwith theRussian textof TheMaking of the State Writer will realize immediately that theauthor's newest book is a translation of the long firstchapter of Formovka sovetskogopisatelia (Moscow: Akademicheskii proekt, I999). Excluded from the 2000 English edition, thischapter (originally entitled 'Utopii tvorchestva' [Utopias of creativity]) iswhat now appears as a separate volume under the title Aesthetics of Alienation. Since thebook will appeal toSlavists, some ofwhom are likely tobe familiarwith Formovka sovetskogopisatelia, it remains amystery why the text's actual origin isnever acknowledged. This oddity aside, thebook does hold as an independent, ifshort,monograph, struc tured in a logical and comprehensive way. Each of itsmain chapters examines one of themajor literary-artistic groupings of the I920S (Proletkult, RAPP, LEF, Pereval) and theirplatforms. In each, theauthor traces a development he considers essential for understanding post-Revolutionary culture and itskinship with theculture of Socialist Realism: the eclipse of the 'creative personality' and the freedoms traditionally asso ciated with artisticwork. Dobrenko sees thisprocess unfolding on twodistinct levels: the socio-political, where a new class of literaryproducers aspires to replace the old artistic intelligentsia; and the ideological, where thenew elites' claim tocultural hege mony iscodified inaesthetic theories and artistic projects. The relation between these two levels isnot unlike the relation between base and superstructure in the cliched Marxist scheme: primary and ultimately determinative is thepolitical struggle,while aesthetic thought does littlemore than justify and rationalize the base (sic) drive to power. Beneath the imaginative constructs and radical projections of thevarious liter ary theories,Dobrenko unveils a rather 'prosaic' predicament: theirauthors' inability tocompete with theclassics, the subconsciously feltimpotence when confronted with the traditional norms of artistic value. This impotence comes first,and only then, as a sort of defence mechanism against it, there appear Proletkult's projects forcollective MLR, I02.2, 2007 6I3 writing, the 'life-building' of LEF, RAPP's imperative of 'restraint', etc. Dobrenko asks again and again thatwe look past the utopian content of these ideas and see, instead, theirquite pragmatic function: to rewrite the rules of artistic practice, so that theybe advantageous to the class of lumpen-literati promoted by theRevolution. Dobrenko navigates effortlessly through thevarious currents of cultural theory of the I920S, tracing them to theirconfluence (and extinction) in the 'petrifiedutopia' Stalinist Socialist Realism. His knowledge of primary material is, as always, im pressive, ifoften counterbalanced by a penchant for quotations, whose frequency threatens the conceptual cohesion of thewhole. Conceptually, the study's main vul nerability is its adherence to pre-critical convictions about 'genuine' art-the tacit background against which the 'ersatz art' of theproletarian writers and the...