Proletarian Writers Research Articles

Борьба за самоопределение в русской литературе: «еврейский вопрос» Бориса Эйхенбаума

In the late 1920s, Boris Eikhenbaum began to identify himself as a Jew; not by religion certainly, but as a member of a different ethnos than Russians. Despite his foreign-sounding name, until that point there had been few clues that Eikhenbaum had a Jewish background. He made this declaration in “Moi vremennik” (1929), the part autobiography, part notebook, and part chronicle of his life and times. Although his identification as a Jew was short-lived, still it is surprising. Eikhenbaum was already one of Russia’s leading literary scholars, a central figure with Viktor Shklovsky, Roman Jakobson, and Yury Tynianov of the Formalist movement at a time when Formalism was coming under intense criticism from the Soviet literary establishment. Moreover, rather than emphasize one’s ethnic difference, the wise thing would have been to try to underscore one’s class identification and proletariat background. Instead, Eikhenbaum invoked the memory of his Jewish grandfather, a Hebrew poet in the mid-1800s, and underscored his difference with native Russians. The goal, the author argues, was part of Eikhenbaum’s battle with the Soviet literary establishment that was becoming increasingly intolerant of diversity of voices. Eikhenbaum tried to show that he had just as much right to membership in Russian literature as the Proletarian writers, just as his grandfather was part of the literature of Russia, although he wrote primarily in Hebrew.

Portrait of Pushkin by the Proletarian Writer – Focusing on Platonov’s critiques and Plays

Portrait of Pushkin by the Proletarian Writer – Focusing on Platonov’s critiques and Plays

"Violent and Sentimental by Turns": The Gendered Discourses of Mike Gold

Proletarian writer Michael Gold famously adopts a pose of exaggerated virility in his theoretical writing as a defense against charges of the effeminacy that was associated with intellectuals, with mass culture, and with Jewish men. But the portraits Gold draws in his autobiographical novel, Jews Without Money , suggest a more complex gendered and ethnic rhetoric through which he idealizes feminized, sentimental domesticity as a counterpoint to gangsterism, the myth of the wild west, and the drive for an authentic, manly American identity. By yoking together the registers of the sentimental and the violent in his writing, Gold seeks not only to move his readers emotionally, but also to goad them toward revolutionary action. This motivational mission justifies Gold's writing as valuable labor rather than the intellectual parasitism and aesthetic prostitution he consistently condemns.

Jonathan E. Abel Redacted: The Archives of Censorship in Transwar JapanRedacted: The Archives of Censorship in Transwar Japan. Jonathan E. Abel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. Pp. xi+355.

Jonathan E. Abel Redacted: The Archives of Censorship in Transwar JapanRedacted: The Archives of Censorship in Transwar Japan. Jonathan E. Abel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. Pp. xi+355.

Teaching the Ecological Awareness on the use of John Steinbeck's Novel in English Language Learning for University Student in Thailand

For many centuries ago, critics have considered John Steinbeck literary works in a variety of many aspects, which it was found in various genres; collections of essays, articles in journal, research papers in university, or books -- into 4 main standpoints. Firstly, some critics employ a historical approach and interpret his novels in the context of American which relevance to the global history. Secondly, make a use of Marxist’s approach to considered Steinbeck’s works and let him to be a proletarian writer of the grassroots people. Furthermore, some critics are involved in investigate the use of myth whereas others give increasing attention to feminism and minorities’ studies in Steinbeck novel. Finally, the ecological vision of Steinbeck had become more influence in the eyes of the young generation reader in the 21 century. In Thailand, the English novels and short stories are also maintained in every University, especially, the student who are taking English as their major subject. They also study many works of famous author as John Steinbeck in many aspects, not only for entertainment but for education improvement and recreational of their vision too. This paper will look at some of John Steinbeck’s novels from an ecological awareness standpoint and bring the significance of relationship between human and nature as Cheryll Glotfelty (1996) urges in the Eco-criticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, the institution of literary studies should respond to global environmental crises. This paper is based on my certainty that an eco-critical approach can help restore the inequality caused by anthropocentric literary criticism and illustrate our awareness to significance of ecological problems by re – observe and explore Steinbeck’s visualization and his suggestions to counter ecological utilization.

A History of Russian literary theory and criticism: the Soviet age and beyond

This volume assembles the work of leading international scholars in a comprehensive history of Russian literary theory and criticism from 1917 to the post-Soviet age. By examining the dynamics of literary criticism and theory in three arenas--political, intellectual, and institutional--the authors capture the progression and structure of Russian literary criticism and its changing function and discourse. The chapters follow early movements such as formalism, the Bakhtin Circle, Proletklut, futurism, the fellow-travellers, and the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers. By the cultural revolution of 1928, literary criticism became a mechanism of Soviet policies, synchronous with official ideology. The chapters follow theory and criticism into the 1930s with examinations of the Union of Soviet Writers, semantic palaeontology, and socialist realism under Stalin. A more humanised literary criticism appeared during the ravaging years of World War II, only to be supplanted by a return to the party line, Soviet heroism, and anti-Semitism in the late Stalinist period. During Khrushchev's Thaw, there was a remarkable rise in liberal literature and criticism, that was later refuted in the nationalist movement of the long 1970s. The same decade saw, on the other hand, the rise to prominence of semiotics and structuralism. Postmodernism and a strong revival of academic literary studies have shared the stage since the start of the post-Soviet era. For the first time anywhere, this collection analyses all of the important theorists and major critical movements during a tumultuous ideological period in Russian history, including developments in emigre literary theory and criticism.

Streets of Promise, Streets of Sorrow: Kobayashi Takiji and the Proletarian Movement

In this article I read the public space and streetscapes of early-Shōwa Tokyo through the lens of proletarian writers. I use the conceptual tools provided by cultural geographers, in particular the concept of emotional geography. Activists of the late 1920s co-opted the streets to distribute leaflets and engage in other forms of agitation. Through their actions they attempted to reinscribe the meaning of the streets, extending even to the ceremonial plazas laid out to showcase imperial power. The risks and exhilarations of such activity are vividly recounted in works including Tokunaga Sunao's ‘The Sunless Street', Sata Ineko's poem ‘Leafleting', and Kobayashi Takiji's posthumously published novella, ‘The Life of a Party Member'. Takiji's novella details the dangerous cat-and-mouse game underground activists played as they worked on behalf of the illegal Communist Party and dodged the surveillance of the secret police.

Managing Women: Disciplining Labor in Modern Japan (review)

Reviewed by: Managing Women: Disciplining Labor in Modern Japan Helen MacNaughtan (bio) Managing Women: Disciplining Labor in Modern Japan. By Elyssa Faison. University of California Press, Berkeley, 2007. xiv, 227 pages. $39.95. Elyssa Faison has written a very interesting book on Japanese female textile workers during the interwar period. She focuses on the discourse and [End Page 231] counterdiscourse between employers and workers and the systems of management utilized by large textile companies that aimed to define women workers primarily by their gender in an attempt to dissuade women from organizing and striking as workers. She frames her discussion within key themes of gender, ethnicity, and nationalism and locates it more broadly in a dialogue with the tensions surrounding the social (and economic) roles of women in a modernizing Japan. In chapter 1 Faison relates how women entered the modern textile work force during the Meiji period and notes the emergence of paternalistic labor ideology and the passage of the 1929 Factory Law. In chapter 2 she describes how the industry focused on keeping these women workers busy and "out of trouble" after night work had been abolished (by the 1929 legislation). She describes how textile managers were fearful that increased free time would incite young female workers to sexual depravity (leading to pregnancy or prostitution) or that they might have more time to devote to organizing themselves into collective action. Certainly the latter fear was well founded, as she depicts in her later chapters discussing textile strikes. But in some respects I would have liked Faison to delve further into the legitimacy of fears that these women were "dangerously close to falling into prostitution" (p. 51). For example, how founded does Faison think this fear was for textile managers? While such fears (real or otherwise) no doubt provided some motivation for managers to provide educational and other structured activities for their young female workers, there were also other motivations for this, including (as she notes) a preference for a more "holistic approach to the management of workers" (p. 33). In chapter 3 Faison takes a look at "cultivation groups" and the role they played in gendering both men and women in Japan. In particular she looks at the concept of shūyō (cultivation or self-cultivation) and how textile employers used this as a basis for compulsory programs of learning and activity for their female workers, again in an attempt to limit worker time and thereby preempt activism (p. 54). Her account of the Shōjokai (Young Women's Association) and its interest in female workers in this chapter is valuable, as is the discussion of the tensions inherent within the image of the factory girl as a model of filial piety. The Shōjokai wanted to intervene and protect female factory workers from the "polluting influences of modern machinery, the industrial process and urban life" as well as cultivate them in the "womanly arts and improve morals" (p. 63). Faison also describes how the shūyōdan (self-cultivation units) were keen to provide factory girls with training—primarily calisthenics, cleaning (she provides an interesting description and image of the "dust rag dance" [pp. 73–74]), and etiquette-based programs—to fill their nonworking hours. The tensions between the shūyōdan, textile management, and textile unions are palpable (pp. 78–80) [End Page 232] and it would have been interesting to have gained a clearer sense of how these tensions played out between them during these years. Chapter 4 changes tack somewhat in that it focuses on two women: Tatewaki Sadayo, a labor activist who founded a worker's school for women, and her friendship with the proletarian writer Nakamoto Takako who wrote extensively (in semifictionalized form) on the T ōyō Muslin strike of 1930. In this chapter, Faison describes the events of the T ōyō Muslin strike itself, discusses the indirect association of these two women with this strike, and broadly places this narrative within the textile industry's rationalization efforts, the relocation of production to Japanese colonies, and the rise of proletarian consciousness and labor unrest in Japan at this time. Faison then turns again to this very interesting discussion on the sexuality of...

Jean-Paul Sartre, John Steinbeck and the liability of liberty in the post-war period

The polarities of the Cold War impelled many intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic to take sides either with capitalism or communism. Both Jean-Paul Sartre and John Steinbeck famously attempted to respond to this ideological choice and would differ in their political leanings: Sartre was an outspoken critic of American capitalist hegemony, whereas Steinbeck became an avid opponent of the communist bloc. They nonetheless shared a dedication to engaging with the social issues of their time, becoming arguably the pre-eminent proletarian writers of the period and eventual Nobel Prize winners. Sartre believed Steinbeck to be `the most rebellious, perhaps' of American writers, whilst Steinbeck so admired the French intellectual scene typified by Sartre that he spent nearly a year in Paris writing for Le Figaro. Their pivotal promotion of individual freedom may have nudged them towards both ends of the political spectrum respectively; yet their emphasis on the changeability of human existence constantly destabilized any position they approached. In this article I argue for a productive return to their writing in order to underline the alternations both encounter when seeking to put the libertarian ideal of individuality into practice. In their novels L'Âge de raison (1945) and East of Eden (1952), as well as in their journals, we can observe how their mutual emphasis on man's indeterminism as an autonomous subject inevitably dissolves the foundation of any normative political ethos. As such, it is crucial to reiterate that their engagement with the post-war period in fact deeply complicates the drive for totalization and systemization implied in the strict allegiances of the Cold War political terrain.

"Vomit Your poison": Violence, Hunger, and Symbolism in Pietro di Donato's Christ in Concrete

The study of food practices and patterns as well as the exploration of the regional and generational differences of preparation and in Italian American culture has been a source of much discussion among scholars in the fields of history, sociology, literature, and psychology. (1) Indeed, Italian Americans are known for and deeply proud of their connection to food, and this identification remains one of the most prominent aspects associated with their culture. Food, in its capacity to nourish and to appease physical and spiritual hunger, sustains life and faith, and becomes a compelling topic for Italian American artists to explore. In literature, as Gian-Paolo Biasin points out in The Flavors of Modernity: Food and the Novel, signs in gastronomy ... constitute an integral part of the technique used for representation, narration, and characterization (11). Food becomes an essential part of understanding narratives as it helps to identify how authors use various elements of fiction such as tone, setting, and conflict to create the world of the novel. For instance, traditional Italian dishes such as spaghetti covered in a thick, red sauce, dandelion salad, homemade wine, barley soup, and fried zucchini can be found in John Fante's Wait Until Spring, Bandini (1938), Mari Tomasi's Like Lesser Gods (1949), Don DeLillo's Take the 'A' Train (1962), Tina DeRosa's Paper Fish (1980), and Carole Maso's Ghost Dance (1986). These few examples show Italian American writers using food to illustrate socio-economic ties, cultural identity, group affiliation, and emotional expressions such as nostalgia, grief, and desire; eating these ethnic specific foods helps the characters diminish the geographical and temporal distance caused by immigration and assimilation. In his autobiographical novel Christ in Concrete (1939), proletarian writer Pietro di Donato uses food to depict the ethnic and class identity of his characters, but he also underscores the conflicted and conflicting effects cooking and have on the life of Italian immigrants in 1920s America. (2) By employing the image of food as a metaphor for self-expression, di Donato creates a discourse of food that links the physical to the spiritual and critiques social forces that simultaneously deprive and poison the working poor. America denies the Immigrant a nourishing environment in which to grow, so they must learn to struggle against oppression or suffer through it. Di Donato explores this absence of nourishment by inventing a working-class aesthetic out of the vile, vulgar image of vomit. As Pierre Bourdieu explains in Distinction, Tastes (i.e., manifested preferences) are the practical affirmation of an inevitable difference. It is no accident that, when they have to be justified, they are asserted purely negatively, by the refusal of other (56). Di Donato, in writing about class structure, questions the legitimacy of tastes by challenging bourgeois culture through his use of distaste, or what Bourdieu might classify as a disgust provoked by horror or visceral intolerance ('sick-making') of the tastes of others (56). (3) Vomiting is itself a violent act--the body rejects what it has eaten; furthermore it can be either self-induced or provoked by harmful factors, which prevents the absorption of nutrients vital for the body's survival. Vomiting stops the necessary process of ingestion and stimulates purging, the body ridding itself of what it refuses to consume. This dysfunctional consumption works against the more traditional, middle class aesthetic of beauty and taste by focusing instead on the ghastly (Gigante 36). In Christ in Concrete when the word vomit or actual vomiting appears, di Donato purposively shocks the reader and associates this distasteful image with the survival of the Italian immigrant. Vomit as a culinary sign also moves the discussion of food from simply celebrating cultural identity to showing the volatility of the immigrants' working and living conditions. …

A comparative reading of John Steinbeck's and Frank Hardy's works

Although belonging to literatures spatially and traditionally very remote from each other, John Steinbeck, an American Nobel Prize winner, and Frank Hardy, an Australian novelist and story-teller, share a number of common grounds. The fact that by the time Hardy wrote his first novel, in 1950, Steinbeck was already a popular writer with a long list of masterpieces does not justify the assumption that Hardy had Steinbeck at hand when writing his best-sellers, but it does exclude the opposite direction of inheritance. Hardy's creativ impulses and appropriations may have been the unconscious results of his omnivorous reading after he realized that "the transition from short stories [in which he excelled] to the novel was an obstacle not easily surmounted" as he confessed in The Hard Way: The Story Behind "Power Without Glory" (109). Furthermore, since both were highly regarded proletarian writers in communist Russia, Hardy might have become acquainted with Steinbeck's novels on one of his frequent visits to that country between 1951 and 1969.2 Upon closer reading, inter-textual entanglements with Steinbeck's prose can be detected in several of his books, including But the Dead Are Many (1975), the Billy Borker material collected in The Yarns of Billy Barker (1965) and in The Great Australian Lover and Other Stories (1967), and in Power Without Glory (1950). My purpose in this essay is to briefly illuminate the most striking similarities between the two authors' narrative strategies in terms of their writing style, narrative technique, and subject matter, and link these textual affinities to the larger social and cultural milieu of each author. In the second part I will focus on the parallels between their central works, Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Hardy's Power Without Glory.

The Biography of the Object

TreViakov wrote Biography of the Object (or Biography of the Thing /biografiia veshchiy) at a time when the champions of the new proletarian realism were campaigning for the reinstatement of the sovereign human subject at the center of the fictional narrative. Under the slogan of the ^zhivoi chelovekj, members of VAPP (The All-Union Association of Proletarian Writers) and the Na literaturnom postu [On Literary Guard] group advanced the psychological novel as the most suitable means for constructing an image of the that was nuanced and complex enough to reflect the psychic density and existential inscrutability of human experience. But as some members ofLef pointed out, this cultivation of psychological complexity usually yielded stories that did not make sense. For example, Osip Brik noted in a review ofFyodor Gladkov's Cement (1925) that it was impossible for the reader to reconcile the novel's two plots: the protagonist Gleb's reorganization of production at the local cement factory, and the simultaneous foundering of his relationship with his wife. Although Gleb the producer and Gleb the husband coincide chronologically, they never converge. Brik explained that the schizoid structure of the novel's hero originated in a literary device that compresses multiple actants into a single character. What seemed to endow the heralded person with emotional complexity and richness was, in other words, just an aesthetic convention which in no way corresponded to the actual psychic structure of living people. The hero of the psychological novel was not one person, but a compound figuration of the multitude, as Brik explained: Heroism is a literary device that makes possible the attribution to a single (the hero) a sum of deeds (exploits) that in reality have been produced by the labors of an entire series of people. l TreViakov's biography of the object can be understood as a method for unpacking these impossibly dense accumulations of deeds within the device of the hero. Unlike the traditional novel, which filtered the complicated interactions of manifold social groups through the impacted psyche of a single character, TreViakov's object biography is a kind of ant iBildungsroman that focused not on psychological consistency, but on people who are declined

“Siberia under snow” by Kuroshima Denji: Translation and introduction by Lawrence Rogers

Kuroshima Denji (1898–1943) was one of Japan's better-regarded proletarian writers, remembered both for his antiwar stories and his fictionalized accounts of the hardscrabble lives of farmers in pr...

Can Art Be Divorced from Politics?

An issue that has been debated since time of Socrates is Can or philosophy be divorced from politics? Self-proclaimed defenders of what they term pure art have selected as their favorite target informal ban for many years of music of German composer Richard Wagner by Israeli radio and television. Of course, one should not hold Richard Wagner guilty for sins committed by Nazis but these spokesmen of true art believe that one must distinguish artist's political views from aesthetic quality of his and have often criticized any censorship of for political reasons. They argue that distorted use of Wagner's music for Nazi political goals is irrelevant to an appreciation of qualities of pure music, i.e., its sound, melody, harmony, rhythm, etc.This might be acceptable, if Wagner had not used his artistic recognition to speak out in racist terms against what he believed was a malevolent Jewish influence not only in arts but throughout German society. It is for this reason that Nazis were on solid ground in finding much in his writing to back their views and exalted his musical genius as portraying the of great German People.It is precisely because his music did inspire worst impulses of this tribal soul that it gave Nazis valuable ammunition in their attempt to blend German nationalism and Teutonic mysticism as exemplified in The Ring series. Yet whereas, in i900, even father of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, could admire Wagner's music and simply regard his political views as eccentric, this is impossible today.Art Forced to Serve PoliticsThe reverse situation is artist or athlete who is unwillingly made into an idol for ends he does not agree with, but is powerless to stop this exploitation. Few people are aware today that great German heavyweight boxer Max Schmeling, elevated by Nazis into a symbol of Aryan supremacy (especially in his fights against American Black champion Joe Louis and American Jewish boxer Max Baer), refused even under pressure to fire his Jewish manager who was also a personal friend. Schmeling's achievements in ring were his own and his personal integrity does matter today however ignobly he was used and made a symbol of Nazi regime against his will.The Soviet Union glorified proletarian writers such as Jack London and Martin Andersen Nexo or those who exposed worst aspects of corruption in capitalist societies such as Upton Sinclair, but their idealism, compassion, and personal integrity remain unsullied by a regime they did not serve. According to views expressed by Communist Party in Soviet Union, only style of socialist realism was considered fit for masses and as in Nazi Germany, abstract or modern painters were viewed as corrupt and degenerate. Renowned painters such as Joan Miro and Pablo Picasso had to flee their homeland in Spain. German painters were harassed: George Grosz fled to America and Ernst Kirchner committed suicide after persecution by Nazis. Their works were removed from museums and libraries, and copies were added to bonfires that destroyed thousands of books and paintings in public burnings. Similarly, Jazz was labelled nigger or Jew Music in Nazi propaganda publications, leaflets, and posters. In late i930s, a lively trade in smuggled Benny Goodman records came to attention of Gestapo, which pursued a vigorous campaign to hound and force all bars, clubs, and music halls from publicly playing American Jazz.Politicized ArtistsMore than a few artists openly identified with a political creed and sought to promote their views in their art. The great German poet, writer, and playwright Bertold Brecht had seen impact of militarism and threat of Nazis and much of his creative work was devoted to warning of their dangers. Brecht too had to flee, first to Scandinavia and then to America. …

Proletarian Imagination: Self, Modernity and the Sacred in Russia, 1910-1925 by Mark D. s> Steinberg (review)

370 SEER, 82, 2, 2004 republicwas proclaimed. But, like Ukraine, they were tryingto put together a state before they had created the nation. Lackingarms, they could not create a viable army, and their survivaldepended on the White armieskeeping civil war at a distance.With the Red Armytriumphant,theirindependence quickly disappeared.The taskof nation building continued under Soviet rule,but was to be cruelly interrupted under Stalin's purges, when much of the Kazak intelligentsiawas exterminated. Everyhistorianis limited by availablesources,and Sabol acknowledgesthe limits to his. He depends heavily on the publications of the intelligentsia, archivesourcesbeing rathersparse.The unfortunatebut unavoidableresultis that there is little that can be said on how ordinaryKazaks were affected by their efforts. Sabol does, however, stress that the land question was the overriding issue to most Kazaks, and was far more important than political independence, and that the process of developing a national identity he describes was in its early stages. The language is lucid, though there is an assumptionof existingknowledge of the Russian empire in the period. A map would have been useful. This, however, remains a most worthy study that employs the availablesourceseffectivelyand eloquently. Department ofHistoy JOHN SWIFT StMartin'sCollege Steinberg,MarkD. Proletarian Imagination: Sel, Modernity andtheSacred inRussia, I9IO-I925. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, and London, 2002. xii + 335 PP. Illustrations. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $24.95: 1i6.95 (paperback). THEflood of works by proletarian writers in the years before and after the Bolshevikrevolution has only now begun to receive sustained attention from scholarsin the West. Followingon the heels of Evgenii Dobrenko'slarge-scale TheMakingoftheStateWriter (Stanford,CA, 200 I), in which the rise of Soviet literaryinstitutionswas systematicallyanalysed,MarkSteinberghaspresented us with a detailed and subtle social history of early proletarian literature in Russia. The contours of these often tortured attempts at self-expressionby semi-educated workers, along with their many contradictions and inner tensions have seldom been laid out with such care and evident respect. This, along with the meticulousreferencingof sourcematerialwill make Steinberg's book a valuable resourcefor culturalhistoriansand literaryscholarsfor some time to come. While presenting much material of value, Steinberg's book is, however, subject to the same limitations as much social history. Subaltern culture is viewed in isolation from the dominant culture, and the shifting institutional framework that imposed a structure on the 'proletarian imagination' itself. The interactionbetween worker-writersand the dominant cultureprovided a mobile structure that conditioned the development of both cultural trends. Once this focus is lost, process dissolves into ambiguity, the theme that runs throughout Steinberg'sstudy. Symptomatic of Steinberg's approach is an eagerness to draw on much recent cultural theory, but a complete neglect of the tradition of Marxist REVIEWS 37I labour historythat has providedmany subtlereadingsof workingclassculture in other areas. E. P. Thompson's writing on the formation of the English working class, the 'moral economy' and the symbolic structureof subaltern writing, for instance, has much in common with Steinberg's findings about the nascent Russian proletariat, but is completely ignored. Indeed, even contemporary Russian Marxists are given short shrift,generally represented here by the pronouncements of cultural bureaucrats rather than the many more subtle thinkers of the time. The ideological contradictions inherent in much proletarianwriting of the period is set against a rathermechanical and undialectical 'Marxist' meta-narrative and then pronounced to be more complex than Marxist thinkers could comprehend. It is, of course, a simple taskto show the relativevulgarityof culturalbureaucrats'pronouncements in comparisonwith contemporaryculturaltheory,but thiswould be rathermore difficultif these voices were replaced by Walter Benjamin'sforensic analyses of the contradictionsof urbanexperience orAntonio Gramsci'sanalysisof the dynamic relationshipbetween the 'contradictoryconsciousness' of the subaltern masses and the work of 'organic intellectuals' such as the proletarian writers discussed here. These silences in the text speak volumes about the ideological agenda being pursuedhere. In place of an analysisof the ideological and political conflictsof the time in which the proletarian writers engaged, we have a focus on the unstable relations between individual and collective identities, and between religious and secular idea structuresin the work of individual writers. Shifts between optimism and doubts over the possibilityof decisively changing the alienated experiences of the urban masses are not closely integrated into the shifting fortunesof the labour movement before the revolution and then...

Von Niznij Novgorod zu Gor'kij: Metamorphosen einer russischen Provinzstadt by Kristina s> K�ntzel (review)

152 SEER, 8i, I, 2003 Kuntzel, Kristina. Von Jfiznj JNovgorod zu Gor'k#. Metamorphosen einerrussischen Provinzstadt. Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte des ostlichen Europa, 6o. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, 200I. 3I8 pp. Illustrations.Tables. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography.Index. ?69.oo. OVER the lasttwo or threedecades the historyof Russia'stownsandprovinces has been gradually receiving more attention, and this book is a welcome additionto the trend.It concentrateson certainaspectsof Nizhnii Novgorod's life:the Pecherskiimonastery,the annualtradefairand the greatexhibition of I896, the Sormovo works and the cultural and educational institutions. Kuntzel shows how the city developed as a commercial centre thanks to its ideal situation at the confluence of the Oka and Volga rivers, and its good communications in all directions, including eastwards to the Urals and Siberia. During the annual fair, Nizhnii became a microcosm of the empire, with traders and manufacturers from Poland, the Baltic, Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central Asia rubbing shoulders. Industry established itself at Sormovo, on the left bank of the Oka, with shipbuildingfor the Volga, and waslaterextended with theproductionof locomotives, tracksand rollingstock for the railways.The combination of industryand trade ensuredthat Nizhnii did not go through the economic depressionwhich beset most Russian cities after I892, but continued to grow and to develop its municipal services. In 1905-I906, though, for the same reasons, Sormovo was a major centre of workers'unrest. Kuntzel suggeststhat, as in Moscow, the conflictscaused by economic injusticewereexacerbatedbythelargenumberofrecentimmigrants fromthe countryside,nearlyhalfof thepopulation, stillimperfectlyintegrated into the city. The Soviet period began with a double expropriation. First the church schools were subordinated to Narkompros, the churches themselves were robbed of theirvaluables and the monasteriesdeprived of funds till they had to close. Secondly, the trade fair was suspended, though the products of cottage industry and specialist goods from regions such as Siberia and the Caucasus continued to be bought and sold in the city, especially duringJuly and August, when the fair had takenplace. It was reopened in I922, and for severalyearsplayed a majorrole in inter-regionalcommerce, but the turnover was much lower than before 19I4. The fair stumbled on till 1929, supported by those in the Soviet leadership who wanted to revive the economy by encouraging private, co-operative and foreign trade. With the coming of the totally planned economy, however, it was reckoned altogether superfluous. Kuntzel maintainsthatwith itsclosurea majorfocus of inter-ethnictradewas lost, and much of the distinctivenessof Nizhnii disappeared(p. 201). Nizhnii Novgorod now became Gor'kii,in honour of the great proletarian writer who had become first chairman of the new Soviet Writers' Union. Sormovo was a focus of the workers'protest movement of i 9 I9 against food shortages, low wages, single-party rule and the privileges being given to Communists. A few years later, as Krasnoe Sormovo, it became one of the Soviet Union's leading producers of armaments, warships and later atomic submarines.According to Kuntzel the publishedrecordsgive a pale and semianonymous picture of the factory. Strongly integrated into the city before REVIEWS I53 I9I7, and a constant object of concern to the municipality,it was now subject wholly to the centralplanning agencies and industrialministriesin Moscow. Kuntzel argues that in the Soviet period Nizhnii lost its significance as a religious and commercial centre, and its lively cultural life was also undermined . Once a forum for internationalmeetings and exchanges, it became a closed city, and even passenger ships had to pass it at night if they had foreignerson board.During the Sovietperiod it gainedmany new educational institutions,but lost its lively theatre and the animated intellectualdiscussion groups. This historydoes not fulfilall the expectationsit might arouse. The Nizhnii archives are among the richest and best catalogued provincial collections in the Russian Federation. Unfortunately, the author has used them only sparingly, the former party archives not at all. Her list of sources does not referto archivematerials,and she does not provide a descriptionof the fonds she has used, though it would have been very useful to later scholars. Her account of institutions and economic life quite often relies on official handbooks rather than on the memoirs or oral recollections of real people. Not even Gor'kii is quoted as an eye-witness. There are strange omissions: thus, on page I56 we are told...

Centennial reflections on Steinbeck's reputation in Slovenia

Since the late 1920s and his first novel, Cup of Gold (1929), there has been little consensus about John Steinbeck's work, and he has often been praised or dismissed for the wrong reasons. In the wake of the novels with the sweeping reach and social consciousness of In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), and The Grapes of Wrath (1939), and despite the prodigious and startlingly diverse output of his career, Steinbeck was generally regarded as one of America's foremost engaged artists. However, the truth is that be was as much a postmodernist and a modernist, as a traditional proletarian writer. And though be made a significant contribution to the perception of the problems of his time by writing with empathy, clarity and a strong sense of justice about the downtrodden, the exploited, and the defenseless, which contributed to his immense public success, Steinbeck's novels lose none of their richness and power when removed from their historical context. With the human dilemmas on many levels of personal, philosophical, and socio-economic existence, and their deep humanistic, philosophical and ecological message, conveyed through numerous Biblical, Arthurian, and literary allusions, his works are as relevant today as they were when they were written.Appropriate enough, and given that this year marks the centennial of John Steinbeck's birth, celebrated with a year-long series of events taking place throughout the United States and paying tribute to the winner of the 0. Henry Short Story Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Nobel Prize for Literature by examining his legacy in American literature, film, theatre and journalism, and providing new information about the enduring value of his writing, this paper aims to capture the writer's reputation in Slovenia. The plan is to briefly analyse the most illustrative examples of Steinbeck criticism accompanying Slovene publications of his works; then to loosen the hold of deeply entrenched positions of Slovene reviewers, and to highlight the importance of considering Steinbeck's texts from new, insightful and politically unbiased perspectives of contemporary critical engagement. And last but not least, this discussion might hopefully induce Slovene publishers to new printings and translations of Steinbeck's works.

'A Laboratory for the Manufacture of Proletarian Writers': The Stengazeta (Wall Newspaper), Kul'turnost' and the Language of Politics in the Early Soviet Period

DURING THE LAST DECADE OR SO of the 20th century the historiography of Russia underwent, somewhat belatedly, the 'linguistic turn' that had previously been negotiated by the historiography of Western Europe, the Americas and Asia.2 Both social and literary historians expanded their understanding of acceptability in source materials almost infinitely, to include texts that one or other, or both, types of investigator would have treated with suspicion, or simply ignored, in earlier decades. Such material included letters, diaries and memoirs; products of commercial culture, for example popular songs, advertisement texts, mass-market books and printed ephemera; journalism and broadside polemic.3 The employment of sources of this kind was not entirely novel in the context of Russian culture (both the Russian Formalists of the early Soviet era, notably Viktor Shklovsky and, later, Lidiya Ginzburg, and their successors, the Tartu semioticians of the 1960s and 1970s, had also produced work drawing on some of these areas).4 However, boundaries were now drawn more broadly, to include, for instance, popular culture rather than folklore as traditionally denominated, and memoirs and letters by ordinary people as well as by the major figures who had previously attracted individual study.5 At the same time, better established types of source material (e.g. legislative acts or political speeches) began to be regarded not as a transparent reflection of social change, or even merely an expression of ideology, but as a set of rhetorical structures reproducing wide-ranging cultural patterns, many beyond the control of the individual or individuals who shaped them.6 A 'post-modern' conviction that there is no reality beyond language

Andrej Platonov: Der Roman Scastlivaja Moskva im Kontext seines Schaffens und Seiner Philosophie by Pia-Susan Berger-Bügel (review)

330 SEER, 79, 2, 200I Berger-Btugel, Pia-Susan.Andrej Platonov: DerRoman Scastlivaja Moskva imKontext seinesSchaffensundSeinerPhilosophie.Arbeiten und Texte zur Slavistik, 65. Otto Sagner, Munich, 1999. 243 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. DM 42.00. WHEN this novel written between I 932 and 1936 and probably intended as part of a longer work was finally published in JVovyimir in ig9i, its title provoked wry smiles among the reading public. Although the title refers initially to a woman named after the city of her birth, the whole novel, with the exception of the opening paragraph, is set in Moscow and draws on the mythic properties of that city. In I99 I, in the dying days of the Soviet Union, Muscovites struggling with rationing, empty shops and other of the less fortunate legacies of Mikhail Gorbachev, found the title particularly ironic. No doubt as part of its drive to be considered non-elitist, Oxford University has marked the centenary of Platonov's birth in I899 by hosting not one, but two conferences in successive years, devoted to a writer whose proletarian origins could scarcely be more authentic. The eldest of the eleven children of a Voronezh railway worker, Platonoxv never forgot his humble origins. A convinced communist and an idealist, he, like Maiakoskii, was frustrated by the bureaucratization of the Revolution. Proletarian writers, however, were not immune from persecution and the author deals impressively (p. 39) with the question of how Platonov survived the Stalin terror, unlike the wTriters M. P. Gerasimov and V. T. Kirillov. This book has all the strengths and weaknesses of a doctoral thesis. It treads the familiar path of biography, survey of literature, philosophical, historical and political context, before finally, in Chapter Six, addressing itself to SchastlivajaMloskva.Along the way it gives a wealth of detail not easily found elsewhere, such as the dates of every person mentioned and the publication details of every Platonov piece. The detail sometimes becomes overpowerinig and a book of less than 250 pages risks being swamped by its 638 footnotes, some of which almost take on a life of their own. Note I23, for instance, is a lengthy bibliography of the admittedly important Platonov scholar Natal'ia Kornienko. The text, too, is occasionally over-conscientious, as, for example, when a passing reference to the Silver Age (p. 6i) produces a list of the names and dates of seventeen writers active at the time. The author's methodical approach is seen to best advantage in the two outstanding chapters of the book, chapters five and six. Chapter Five, entitled Die aesopische Sprache,deals at length with the question adumbrated by Boris Thomson when he described the essence of Platonov as being the use of 'the wrong word in the right place'. Chapter Six, which occupies some ninety pages, deals with the novel itself, a work which has hitherto attracted relatively little critical attention. A bibliography of relevant literature is to be found tucked away in footnote 2 8. Admirably concise sub-chapters deal witlh such aspects as the textology of the no-el, the Mloscow myth (Berger-Bugel characterizes Platonov's MIoscow;r as 'Die Stadt der Disharmonie' p. I07), the portrayal of Moskva Ivanovna Chestnova, a rare example of a Platonov heroine, and the portrayal of the four male protagonists, Bozhko, Sambikin, Komiagin and Sartorius, for whom Chestnova is 'das verbindende Glied' (p. 97). There is also a REVIEWS 331 comprehensive plot summary (pp. 97-101) which does much to make sense of thisstructurallycomplex novel. Since many of Platonov's papers are still in the hands of the security services, Berger-Bugel is unable to make use of primary sources. However, such is her knowledge of secondary sources that this in no way detractsfrom the book. Further hindered by Platonov's own celebrated reticence, she neverthelessmakes cogent and illuminatingcomments on the central themes in Platonov'sphilosophywhich she characterizes(p. 67) as 'Freedom','Truth' and 'Happiness'. Other Platonovian themes such as 'Hunger', 'Suffering', 'Children'and, especially, 'Man's attitudetowardsNature', are given equally thoroughtreatment. The book is, in general, very well produced, with only one majormisprint (p. 6i), which garblesthe dates of Vladimir Solov'ev. Quotations are given in German in the text and...

The Struggle for Proletarian Music: RAPM and the Cultural Revolution

Since the 1930s, the zealous, idealistic proponents of musical revolution in Soviet Russia, the Rossiiskaia assotsiatsiia proletarskikh muzykantov (Russian association of proletarian musicians, RAPM), have served primarily as an embarrassing footnote to the history of Soviet music and cultural politics. Scholarly opinion of RAPM is remarkably consistent in its condemnation, as Russian-Soviet scholars and westerners alike dismiss the organization for its "simplistic" (western) or "vulgar" (Soviet) ideology and aesthetics. This consensus suggests that RAPM deserves its place in the dustbin of history alongside the Rossiiskaia assotsiatsiia proletarskikh pisatelei (Russian association of proletarian writers, RAPP) and other militant advocates of cultural revolution. But the condescending (western) and embarrassed (Soviet) dismissal of RAPM is itself simplistic. Seeing members of RAPM as undertalented and unwitting tools of the regime's agenda, or misguided if well-intentioned deviationists, obscures the important role the proletarian musicians played in the evolution of Soviet musical culture and aesthetics.