Soviet Literature Research Articles

DIARIES OF M.-S. YAKHYAEV: A BIOGRAPHY IN THE CONTEXT OF TIME

This study is devoted to the work of the Dagestan prose writer, people's writer of Dagestan, playwright Magomed-Sultan Yakhyaev (1922-2006). The purpose of the article is to introduce into scientific circulation information about the diaries of the writer who kept them for more than half a century and to analyze the specifics of the diary genre in the work of the classic of Dagestan Soviet literature, to characterize his attitude to the events of the post-Soviet period, worldview evolution. Since M-S. Yakhyaev devoted his work mainly to the genre of the historical novel, his approaches to assessing the modern era are of interest both from the point of view of studying the work of the author himself, and from the point of view of reflecting the views of the older generation of Russian society on the era of Boris Yeltsin's rule. The diaries have not been published anywhere, their existence was not known until now, they were found on the author's heirs. The material is of interest to biographers and literary scholars dealing with the problems of Dagestan literature. The biographical and historical-literary value of the new genre in the writer's work is substantiated, which makes it possible to see the refraction of the modern history of Russia in the work and worldview of the classic writer of Dagestan literature of the Soviet period; the genre specificity of diaries is revealed M.-S. Yakhyaev.

The Stalinist Past in Contemporary Russian TV Serials: Reconfigurations of Memory

Abstract The two main issues that continue to be in the focus of hot public discussions in Russian society are the Great Patriotic War (the German–Soviet war of 1941–1945, as part of World War II) and the tragedy of Stalinism. While the Great Patriotic War was widely reflected in Soviet literature and cinema, the Stalinist issue was seldom represented in Soviet art. In the 1980s and 1990s, there was a period when Soviet and post-Soviet art contributed much to the debates on the Soviet past, and several significant anti-Stalinist films and literary works were created. Since the early 2000s, the cultural situation in Russian society has changed and nostalgia of the Soviet past has spread in the mass consciousness. The purpose of this research is to analyze how the Stalinist past is reconstructed in public memory in contemporary cinema narratives. We arrive at the conclusion that since the 2000s, public interest has drifted from images of war heroism to ordinary people’ lives under Stalin; the contemporary public interest is not the war heroes and famous victims of repressions, but the everydayness of ordinary Soviet citizens who tried to build their private lives, careers, friendships, and family relations under the conditions of pressure from the authorities, spreading fear in the society, shortage of goods, and loss of loved ones. We concentrate on several representative Russian TV serials, such as “Liquidation” (2007), “Maryina Roscha” (2012), and “Leningrad, 46” (2014–2015), because all of them are devoted to the first year of the Soviet peaceful life in different Soviet cities, such as Odessa, Moscow, and Leningrad.

Ethnographic and mythopoetic space of the novel “Big Argish” by Mikhail Osharov

The problem of studying the traditional cultures of the peoples of Russia is relevant in the modern social science and humanities research. A significant role in this process is played by literature that reveals the peculiarities of ethnopoetics, worldview, and perception of the world. In fiction writing, the ethnic specificities are reflected in depiction in the natural world, everyday life, mentality, as well ethnographic features of lifestyle of a certain community. Based on the novel by Mikhail Osharov (1894-1937), the article examines the ethnographic peculiarities of depicting the world and man. Analysis is conducted on images of the characters through the specificity of their ethnopsychological consciousness and traditional worldview. The research employs semantic and axiological methods. The scientific novelty consists in the analysis of the national concept of the world through ethnographic peculiarities of depicting literary mages in the novel “Big Argish” by Mikhail Osharov. The novel was written in the Russian language, describing the unique culture, traditions and customs of the Evenki people of the early 1930s. During the political repressions, Mikhail Osharov was shot, and his artistic heritage was eliminated from the sociocultural space of the Soviet literature and literary studies. In the context of returning the names and heritage of the repressed writers, develops a new perspective of the literary works. In his novel, Mikhail Osharov preserved the peculiarities of traditional culture and everyday life of the Evenki people of the early XX century.

The Changing Kazakh Literature From the Soviet Era to the Independence Period in Kazakhstan

Literature in the Soviet Union was an instrument to embed socialism and build Soviet society. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the supreme authority that shaped the literary process. During the Soviet era, especially after the establishment of the Soviet Writers' Union in 1934 and the determination of socialist realism as the primary art method of Soviet literature, literature was incurred entirely under the control of the Soviet ideology. A period has begun in which the authors produced works as “directed” by orders and instructions of the Soviet administration, instead of making literary production freely. Even though there were various historical breaks and relative moderation in the Soviet administration from time to time, this situation continued until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It is possible to entitle this period "national literature" period when looking at the ongoing process since 1991. The Kazakh literature works, which developed from 1991 to the present, dealt with Kazakh national, religious, and moral values damaged during the Soviet period and glorified those values, drew attention to them. It is seen that the issues which were impossible to mention or forbidden in the Soviet era and some historical truths were brought up. There is a permanent national rise in Kazakh literature from the first years of the independence period. It is observed that Kazakh national identity, which was repressed and tried to be erased during the Soviet era, is built upon the literature today. In this article, the literary process of Kazakh literature as experienced in the Soviet era and the Independence period has been discussed. The point where the Kazakh literature has come from the past to the present, has been put forward.

Von Tauwetter und Tiefdruckgebieten

Summary Based on recent studies on ‘literary meteorology’, the article examines depictions of meteorology in Soviet literature. It contextualizes Daniil Granin’s Into the Storm (1962) and Anatolii Gladilin’s Forecast for tomorrow (1972) within the post-war history of meteorology and reads both texts as examples for a ‘popular meteorology’, in which important shifts in the Soviet culture of science can be detected. In difference to political readings of late Soviet prose on science, it holds, that literary texts can provide valuable insights into shifts of styles on thinking, the praxeology of science, its anthropological implications and into models of scientific evolution.

Lifetime edition of works by A.E. Kulakovsky as the basic texts of the poet

The study objective is describing the interpretation features of Kulakovsky's ideas and images in the history of Yakut Soviet literature; outlining the national uniqueness of the literary word by this classical poet. The methodological basis of the research is theoretical issues of source studies as a philology area, as well as major aspects of textual criticism. In this paper, we selected comparative and hermeneutical methods of text analysis based on the literary language analysis. The research results show that in Kulakovsky's texts the poetics of oral folk art is equated with an unshakable basis of his individual style, but in works of the classics there are distinct guidelines of the desire to detach from tradition to establish a literary form. The practical and theoretical significance of the research is to present new perspectives of studying the national classics problems.

Генезис и развитие адыгской литературы: проблемы стадиальных состояний и периодизации

The purpose of the research is to solve the issue of stage states and periodisation of the Adyghe literature. Scientific novelty of the work lies in identifying not one (which is all the pre-war decades) but two periods of active interaction with the Russian culture. As a result, it is found that attribution of the first stage in evolution of the Adyghe Soviet literature should be based on ideological principles. Ideally, it can be made only within coordinates of donor - acceptor relations with the Russian Soviet verbal tradition and the entire system of the socialist realist culture, which really defined norms of national writers’ aesthetic beliefs.

Влияние русской литературы на творчество Чулпана: роман «Ночь и день»

The novel Night and Day was initially published in the journal Sovetskaya Literatura (Soviet Literature) in 1934, but was soon banned. In 1989 the Russian translation of the novel was published. The influence of the Russian novel writing school is manifested in the conflict, composition and imagery of the work. In this article, the novel Night and Day is reviewed from the point of view of literary influences on the author. While analyzing the ideological concept, storyline and dramatic episodes of the novel, the author gives some analogies from the classical Russian literature.

Реалистическая и романтическая эстетика в критике Ф. Миннуллина

The purpose of the study is to shed light on principles of “Minnullinian criticism”, where his work is considered as a single system that summarises the whole variety of approaches to the text and methods of analysing works of art. The paper provides an analytical review of F. Minnullin’s articles on literary criticism. Scientific novelty of the work lies in approaching an analysis of the articles that have been previously considered only on the piecemeal basis; realistic and romantic principles of criticism have been ignored by researchers. As a result, it was found that F. Minnullin’s activity in the field of literary criticism reflects the period of formation and development of the Tatar Soviet literature and post-Soviet literature.

Elements of expressionism in the story of A. Green «Gray Car»

The topic of the work is relevant, since at present the Russian literary criticism is rediscovering the features of the artistic expression of Soviet literature of the 1920s. The aim of the study was to discover the features of the poetics of Greens text that allow us to identify the novel under consideration as expressionist. Research methods used in the article: comparative-historical and semantic analysis of texts. At the beginning of the article, the research of the novella Gray Car by A.V. Polupanova and L.U. Zvonareva is considered, inaccuracies and obvious factual errors are noted, indicating a lack of understanding of the text, a mixture of such forms of expression of the authors position (according to B.O. Korman) as hero-narrator and author-narrator. As an empirical material, in addition to the novel by A. Green, the works of G. Mayrink, F. Kafka and L. Perutz were used. As a result of consideration of the novels the Golem, Castle, the Cossack and the Nightingale, the Wizard of judgment was allocated with the following features art in the world of the expressionist literary works: a) the problem of identity associated, as a rule, the main character; 2) semema madness, which became a constant for expressionist texts; 3) mysterious (hidden) order of a seemingly chaotic world; 4) the lack of success of speech acts. All these features were found in the story of A. Green, so it seems that the new approach to the work of the writer as a representative of Russian expressionism, demonstrates its consistency and can be contrasted with the more traditional consideration of the authors prose as a super-textual unity.

Revolution Rekindled: The Writers and Readers of Late Soviet Biography by Jones Polly (review)

SEER, 99, 2, APRIL 2021 348 Jones, Polly. Revolution Rekindled: The Writers and Readers of Late Soviet Biography. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2019. ix + 296 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £74.00. The very last thing that the post-Stalin Soviet leaders wanted was the resumption of any revolutionary activity anywhere in the USSR. They were far too busy promoting revolutions in the Far Abroad and crushing ‘counterrevolutions ’ in the Near Abroad (notably in East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland). In her meticulously researched (with just one exception — see the next two paragraphs) analysis, Polly Jones asks a highly relevant question. Why, during the 1960s, at exactly the same time as various dissident movements in the Soviet Union were beginning to take shape, did the main publisher of political literature, Politizdat, decide to commission and issue a huge series of largely sympathetic biographies of Russian and other revolutionaries while ‘the Kremlin’ was gradually leading the country towards the first stage of Communism, likely to be reached by the end of the century? Might not such biographies somehow encourage, even inspire, a few, or more than a few, pernicious anti-Soviet individuals and increase the number of ‘antagonistic contradictions’ in the period of ‘mature socialism’? In her Introduction, Jones mentions a little-known editor, Vladimir Novokhatko, who is, I think, regardless of his motivations and strategy, the real hero of this book. He is the person most responsible for the ‘Fiery Revolutionaries’ (it sounds better in Russian) series of 156 biographies that were published between 1968 and 1990 and competed quite successfully with another series, ‘Lives of Remarkable People’, for sales and popularity. Some younger readers of the Introduction may misunderstand the atmosphere in the USSR during this period because the author uses the term ‘late Soviet’ some thirty times here (and many more times during the rest of the book). We know now that she is perfectly correct, but hardly anybody sensed this at the time (Andrei Amal´rik is a rare exception, but he is mentioned in this book only once, in the Bibliography, and is not discussed at all). This is strange, because Jones mentions Alexei Yurchak’s book (Everything was Forever, Until It Was No More, Princeton, NJ, 2005) several times, but appears not to realize how greatly the misperception that the Soviet regime would not, could not, come to an end in their lifetime guided the tactics and strategies of nearly everybody. (And indeed, thirty years after the demise of the USSR, Russia, led by an unrepentant KGB officer, is in some important ways still in a neo-Soviet, rather than post-Soviet, stage of development.) Chapter one, ‘Politizdat’s Literary Turn After Stalin’, touches on the role of the individual in history — sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, and is centred on the partial ‘dethronement’ of Stalin’s personality cult in 1956 and later. The most amazing feature of this splendid book is that it REVIEWS 349 contains not a single mention of istmat, historical materialism, which most people in the USSR were obliged to study. The closest Jones gets to this is to state that ‘[b]iography was theoretically problematic for a regime based on an ideology of collective class consciousness and behaviour and on suprapersonal historical laws’ (pp. 49–50). This is inadequate, because, according to istmat, as crudely taught in the Soviet Union, the only way out from socialism was to progress into the first stage of Communism. A return to capitalism was theoretically inconceivable. The rest of this monograph is better, and I regret that I shall have to discuss it so briefly. Chapter two, ‘Authors, Editors, and the Niches of Late Soviet Literature’, starts with references to books by Boris Kagarlitskii and Vladimir Shlapentokh: ‘It has often been claimed that late Soviet intellectual life was primarily defined by collusion, compromise, and complicity with the state’ (p. 66). This is true, but I would add two more ‘c’ words, whose meanings are sometimes difficult to distinguish from one another: cooperation and collaboration by writers (and others) with the Soviet authorities. Some of the contributors to the ‘Fiery Revolutionaries’ series were completely supportive of the then authorities (so...

Отражение политической культуры социал-демократов Сибирского союза в литературе 1960-1980-х гг.

The article presents a survey of the Soviet literature of the 1960-1980s on political culture of representatives of the Siberian branch of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Scientific originality of the study lies in the fact that the author for the first time provides a historiographical analysis of the problem. The paper reveals conditions, tendencies and problems of developing the Soviet historiography of regional social democratic organizations in the period before and during the First Russian Revolution. The conducted research allows concluding that in the mentioned period, the source base of the historical and political science was considerably enlarged, the number of scientific staff increased, new coordination centres appeared, but methodological basis remained the same, so conceptually new studies could hardly appear.

Reception of the novel “What is to be Done?” by N. G. Chernyshevsky: “new people” in the Soviet dramaturgy of the 1920s – 1930s

The goal of this research is to reveal the peculiarities of reception of the novel “What is to be Done?” by N. G. Chernyshevsky in the Soviet dramaturgy of the 1920s – 1930s. These texts fully reflect the concept of state order, the pursuance of “socialist realist” normatization, and thus, most vividly demonstrate the specificity of functionality of the fundamental mythological concepts in semantic field of the Soviet literature. Particular attention is given to the plays by V. N. Bill-Belocerkovskij and A. Glebov. The article also employs the works of A. Neverov, V. Vishnevsky, A. Afinogenov, who largely determined the dramaturgical image of their time. The work is conducted within the framework of the mythopoetic approach, using structural-semiotic and intertextual methods. The relevance is substantiated by the need for a more comprehensive examination of the literary discourse of the 1920s – 1930s. The scientific novelty consists in attraction of an array of little studied texts of the “official” Soviet dramaturgy for identification of the cultural and literary sources of the image of “new people”, which determined the functionality of this mythologem in the literary discourse of the 1920s – 1930s. The conducted research demonstrated that in the period of post-revolutionary culture, the novel “What is to be Done?” by N. G. Chernyshevsky acquires the status of a sacred text, becomes the focus of intertextual overlap of dramaturgical texts, as well as one of the foundations for the formation of the Communist myth of the “new people” common to literature of that time. The works of the official Soviet playwrights are characterized by the declaration of continuity with regards to the novel, which in their works is demonstrated on the level of plot, themes, ideas, particular images, and separated details.

A Demonic Chrysalis: The Concept of Bourgeoisie in Poland

This paper investigates the history of the concept of bourgeoisie in Poland, emphasising troubles with its assimilation into the Polish language, and its special entanglement with the socialist and modernist discourse. The concept, it is argued, was borrowed in the late nineteenth century from France, where it concerned the urban upper-middle class; it arrived in Poland as part of the socialist discourse of the time, which gave it strong negative and derogatory connotations. The ambiguity that arose was further complicated by a number of other factors as well. First, the understanding of the term ‘bourgeoisie’ within the leftist discourse was itself ambivalent, combining the strictly theoretical definition encompassing the class of capitalist owners of the means of production, and the practical and emotional label attached to the urban classes. Second, also for the reasons indicated above, the concept of bourgeoisie was not able to replace the older Polish concepts regarding the urban population [mieszczaństwo], and the differences between them remained vague, and occasionally disputable. Third, not only did the term ‘bourgeoisie’ never fully emancipate itself from the domination of the indigenous concepts, but it also suffered from its translation into Polish, where it was regularly omitted when regarding Western European realities, but where it was a permanent fixture in the case of Russian and Soviet literature. Finally, the paper searches for the reasons behind the relative elimination of the concept from the Polish discourse, or at least large segments thereof, in the last half-century.

Kindheit- und Kindlichkeitskonzeptionen in der russischen Literatur des 21. Jahrhunderts

The article begins with an overview of the childhood conceptions found in literature for children’s and young people. The conception of childhood in the Enlightenment is directed towards the future. The characters are serious and strive to become better people. They are an example for the recipients. Romanticism, on the other hand, tries to undermine this idea, and evokes a golden age of childhood. The first type dominated Soviet literature for children and young people. This changed in the 21st century. The analysis of Sabitova’s, Emec’s, Wostokows’s, Krjukova’s, Murašova’s and Verkin’s novels shows how these childhood myths are successfully combined in modern books for children and young adults.

Daugavpils – „Sarkanā Verdena”: 1919–1920

The battles near Daugavpils had an important role during the war for Latvia’s independence. Since 1918, the Soviet literature predominantly offered a version about Daugavpils as “Red Verdun” which had fought defence battles (for 129 days) against “the joint forces of Polish and Latvian white guards”. Objectively evaluating the historic events, the primary sources – Latvian press publications play an essential role. In this article, the materials from seven press editions have been employed. Regarding the press development, a new feature was the foundation of the Latvian Press Bureau (LPB) in March, 1919, and later – of Latvian Telegraph Agency (LETA). The task of the bureau was to inform the world’s news agencies and local media about the events happening in the territory of Latvia. The Soviet literature does not mention anything about the Red Terror which was carried out by so called commissioners for maintaining the order. On March 28, 98 people were shot dead near Daugavpils Fortress. This was the bloodiest crime committed by the Bolsheviks during the time of P. Stuchka’s Soviet government. These crimes became known to the wider society from the publications in the press only after Daugavpils was set free. The fight for Daugavpils took place in three phases: fights on the left bank of the river Daugava, capturing the outskirts of the town (August, 1919); the use of French tanks, Polish and Bolshevik armoured train, capturing the fortress bridgehead (September, 1919); Daugavpils occupation by Polish army and arrival of Latvian army (January 3, 1920). The press regularly published reports from the General Headquarters of Latvian, Lithuanian and Polish armies. When Daugavpils was set free, there were special correspondents of several newspapers who informed about the situation in the town. Though maintaining a lively interest in the events taking place in Daugavpils, in some cases the newspapers published unverified and false information, then trying to correct it or call it off.

К вопросу о новаторстве М. Горького

In Soviet literary criticism, Gorky's innovation was usually associated with his revolutionary activity, calling him “the first proletarian writer in time and rank” and “the founder of socialist realism”. The cliches of Marxist-Leninist aesthetics were so tightly attached to the writer that they survived to this day. The paper considers the work of Gorky from new methodological standpoint, since the writer from the very beginning of his activity sought to create his own method of depicting life from the perspective of the future. Analyzing the novel “Mother”, which was considered the first work of socialist realism, the author shows that this novel was inextricably connected with a philosophical and aesthetic system of the Silver Age, and its genre (utopia novel) is consonant with the novels by A. Bogdanov “Red Star” and F. Sologub “Legend in the making”. The organic connection of Nietzscheanism with Marxism, and God-building with a realistic description of the revolutionary movement in the working settlement, was truly innovative. Gorky's sincere faith in socialism, which could become a new religion of the working person, was first expressed in an art work as a utopian dream of a happy future for Russia. Socialist mythology, combined with realism and romanticism, created an innovative method of depicting reality, which is characteristic of “Tales of Italy”, an autobiographical trilogy and “The Life of Klim Samgin”. Gorky's work came to be a link between the culture of the Silver Age and Soviet literature.

Александр Трифонович Твардовский – Василий Теркин советской и русской литературы К 110-летию со дня рождения

Александр Трифонович Твардовский – Василий Теркин советской и русской литературы К 110-летию со дня рождения

«Советский Пушкин»: пушкинский субстрат автомифотворчества А.Н. Толстого 1930-х гг.

The aim of this article is to review Aleksey N. Tolstoy's self-projections on the figure of Pushkin, seen as the most important classic author in the USSR during the 1930s. The material for the study was the writer's journalism and program speeches - it was in them that he most actively appealed to the Pushkin myth. Such appeals allowed Tolstoy to assert his special status in the Soviet literary hierarchy. In his articles and public speeches, the writer actually declared himself the heir of Pushkin, since both, each in his own era, created a “new literary language” based on historical documents. The category of language was important since the discussion about it became one of the key ones in determining the main aesthetic features of the emerging socialist realism. Pushkin, relying on folk speech, created a new “living” literary language opposing the “academic” elegant phrase of nobility (works by Turgenev, in Tolstoy's opinion, later became the peak of this style). Tolstoy, in turn, also saw his own merit in the discovery of a “new” language - the language of Soviet literature in his case. According to Tolstoy, both Pushkin and himself, relied on historical documents that reflected “authentic common people's” language in the process of creation. When writing, e.g., The Captain's Daughter, Pushkin used documents about Pugachev's Rebellion; while Tolstoy, creating Peter the Great, employed torture protocols of Peter's era, the so-called “Slovo i Delo”. As a result, the succession scheme was built in the following way: “common people's language” with almost a thousand years of history - Pushkin (the creator of a “new” literary language based on common people's language) - Tolstoy (the author who modernized these traditions and created a normative Soviet literary language based on them). These rhetorical techniques allowed the Comrade Count to increase his status in the Soviet literary hierarchy. On the one hand, he used the symbolic potential inherent in the Pushkin myth (the culmination of the poet's canonization was the commemoration of 1937); on the other hand, the figure of Pushkin, in relation to whom the word “great” was used, was constantly projected on Stalin. In the end, even despite a biography which was dubious from the point of view of the authorities, by the mid-1930s, Tolstoy, indeed, received the status of the main Soviet author. This situation was evidenced, for example, by a cartoon where the writer alone was depicted on the upper deck of the “steamship of Soviet literature”. Besides, at the funeral of Gorky, Tolstoy, along with Stalin, carried the coffin of the “proletarian writer”, as if occupying the “empty” place after the death of his predecessor. The important role in obtaining this status was played by Tolstoy's regular and consistent efforts to create his own writer's reputation based on the figure of Pushkin.

From the Poet of Stagnation to the Prophet of Revolution: Metamorphoses of Anton Chekhov’s reception

The article traces the reception of Chekhov’s image and works from 1880–1900s, and its continuation in Stalinist culture. The transitional (from realism to modernism) nature of Chekhov’s works initially forced 19th century critics to negatively assess the “lack of ideology” and the “accidentality” of his poetics, and later to present Chekhov as an exponent of “longing for a common idea” and “a fighter against vulgarity”. The claims that Chekhov was outdated or, conversely, becoming relevant, were strictly correlated with the periods of stagnation/revolutionary activity. Similar patterns can be observed in Soviet criticism. In the 1920s, anti-Chekhovian moods were fairly characteristic for avant-garde artists, as well as representatives of the vulgar sociological method who criticized him harshly. After WWII, critics tried to present the “pessimistic” and sophisticated author as a bearer of Soviet dogmas and a predecessor of Soviet literature. For example, Vladimir Ermilov’s works used rhetorical strategies based on the opposition of “intuitive striving for freedom” vs “suppressive social reality”, which led Chekhov to the conclusion about the need for radical social changes. With the help of such rhetorical devices, the mournful “singer of stagnation” was transformed into a “prophet of revolution”. The task of connecting Chekhov to the humanistic tradition was solved by ascribing to him sympathy for the “little man” and “working man”. All such substitutions were done by equating the author’s and his heroes’ evaluative position. Many features of the “Soviet” Chekhov image can be traced back to Chekhov’s lifetime criticism, and therefore the outdated works of Soviet scholars can serve a clear example of cultural recycling, in which seemingly abandoned old ideas are reworked anew.