Soviet Writers Research Articles

The Art of Indifference in Shalamov's Kolyma Tales

In his Kolyma Tales, Soviet writer Varlam Shalamov represents the narrative duality or “double telling” characteristic of the Gulag survivor's story. In particular, in “Sententious” (“Sententsiia”) and “On Tick” (“Na predstavku”), Shalamov uses the motif of indifference in order to explore the psychological patterns and literary ramifications of the historical phenomenon of the Soviet Gulag.

Over the Fractured Bridge: The Lithuanian Writers’ Union ‘Divorce’ from the Union of Soviet Writers in 1989

Straipsnyje aptariama besikeičianti lietuvių literatūros autorių kultūrinė politinė situacija Lietuvos Persitvarkymo Sąjūdžio metais. Sovietinės priklausomybės laikais viešai savo kūrybą skelbiantys ir okupacinei valdžiai „lojalūs“ literatai būdavo kviečiami tapti Lietuvos SSR „tarybinių rašytojų“ sąjungos nariais ir dalyvauti šios organizacijos veikloje. Šis profesinis socialinis rašytojų susivienijimas buvo „sąjunginės“ SSSR rašytojų sąjungos padalinys. Prasidėjusi pertvarka (perestrojka) Sovietų Sąjungoje ir tautinis Sąjūdis Lietuvoje tapo prielaidomis lietuvių rašytojams pradėti galvoti apie savarankišką, nuo Maskvos politinių institucijų nepriklausomą, profesinį susivienijimą. Jo provaizdžiu tapo tarpukario Lietuvoje veikusi Lietuvių rašytojų draugija ir kitos Vakarų Europos šalyse nuo XIX a. steigiamos rašytojų bendrijos. Parengus Lietuvos rašytojų sąjungos įstatų projektą ir patvirtinus jį 1989 m. birželio 7 d. įvykusiame rašytojų suvažiavime, buvo pertvarkyti teisiniai organizacijos, pavadintos Lietuvos rašytojų sąjunga (LRS), pagrindai. Juridiškai bei politiškai LRS atskirta nuo TSRS rašytojų sąjungos. Tai įvyko 1989 metų viduryje, dar neatkūrus Lietuvos Respublikos nepriklausomybės. Realus organizacijų skyrybų procesas vyko 1989 m. rudenį. Išvadose teigiama, kad aptartas LRS savarankiškumas tapo realus tiek dėl palankių perestrojkos ir Sąjūdžio veiksnių, artėjančio Lietuvos nepriklausomybės atkūrimo, tiek ir dėl asmeninių ano meto Lietuvos rašytojų pastangų, išskirtinių moralinių įsipareigojimų.

A tradução como um exercício analítico: Fazil Iskander entre duas culturas

Fazil Iskander (1929-2016) é um dos mais representativos escritores soviéticos remanescentes da geração do degelo. Sua primeira novela, Sozvezdie Kozlotura (1966), uma sátira sobre a política desenvolvimentista de Khrushiov, traz uma mescla entre a cultura soviética e abkhaziana, constituindo no campo da linguagem uma variação entre a retórica burocrática soviética e o lirismo digressivo do autor com a singularidade de sua origem não-russa. No que concerne a tradução, foi realizada uma abordagem analítica e de contextualização, de modo a compreender Sozvezdie Kozlotura em sua complexidade histórica, social e cultural.

Kampaņa pret abstrakcionismu un formālismu 1963. gadā. Latvijas Padomju rakstnieku savienības valdes nostāja

Between 1962 and 1963 the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev launched several campaigns against abstractionists and formalists in Moscow, thus marking the end of the so-called Thaw throughout the Soviet Union. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia also started a campaign against national abstractionists and formalists. On the 22nd and 28th of March 1963 the works of the new poets Vizma Belševica, Monta Kroma, Ojārs Vācietis as well as writer Ēvalds Vilks came under the criticism cross-fire at the Intelligentsia Meeting of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic. After the criticism from the Communist Party the above mentioned authors also had to be discussed at the Board meetings of the Latvian Soviet Writers’ Union and the local organization meetings of the Party. The article examines the attitude of the Board of Soviet Writers’ Union towards the campaign initiated by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia in March 1963 by looking at the documents of the Latvian Soviet Writers’ Union and the Union’s local organization of the Communist Party that are available at the State Archives of Latvia. Crucial and artistic aspects of the works of the above-mentioned authors have not been included in the analysis. Examining the debates that evolved in the Writers’ Union within the ideological campaign, it is possible to state that the Board, which was loyal to the Communist Party, kept its official stance in line with the Party principles, hereafter paying special attention to the ideologically artistic achievements of particular authors. Generally, the position of the Board of the Latvian Soviet Writers’ Union in respect to the criticized authors can be evaluated as passive, because no repressions were carried out against the new authors and no creative activities were completely suspended by the Board. The campaign of 1963 strongly demonstrates the differences between the generations and the views of the writers. It also reveals the older generation’s struggle for keeping their position and prestige in the field of literature while the younger generation took an increasing opposition.

“Under the Sway of Coal,” or a Story of the British Coal Miner Harold Heslop, Who Failed to Become a Soviet Writer

The paper focuses on the rapid and short-living Soviet writing career of the British coal miner Harold Heslop. Between 1926 and 1931, three novels by Heslop were published in the USSR (in Russian translation) and the translation of a fourth was commissioned and completed, and in 1930 the author himself travelled to the USSR as one of two members of the British delegation at the Kharkov conference of the International Union of Revolutionary Writers (IURW). However, that was the end of his success: the translated novel Red Earth was not published nor were any of his later novels. The only venue for his rare shorter essays and occasional prose excerpts was the magazine International Literature. The paper discusses this curious writer’s biography from different perspectives. It analyzes at length the critical article by Anna Elistratova, published in Na literaturnom postu and International Literature, juxtaposing the two versions and the text of Heslop’s novel to contextualize the writer and his work in the Soviet literary criticism of the time. It explores archival materials—Heslop’s correspondence with different people and institutions as well as institutional papers—to discuss the case as personal as well as institutional history, representative of the situation of the 1930s. Finally the article shifts perspective to discuss the author and his work in the context of the British working-class literature of the time.

Literary Critics of the Literaturnyi Kritik and Literaturnoye Obozreniye Journals according to F. Levin’s Archives

Between 1933 and 1941, critic Fyodor Markovich Levin (1901–1972) was at the center of literary and political events related to the establishment and work of the Sovetsky Pisatel [A Soviet Writer] publishing house (First Director and Editor-in-chief), as well as the Literaturnyi Kritik (Deputy editor) and Literaturnoye Obozreniye (Editor-in-chief) journals. These journals were an extraordinary phenomenon, and not only because of the high artistic quality of the publications. They were created by a team of associates who considered the critic’s own style, voice, and opinion the main criteria of professionalism and necessary components of creativity. The reader was not imposed any party directives on, but got involved in the discussion and creative disputes. His work in the publishing house and the journals determined the fate of F. M. Levin. That period of time saw the formation of his civil and creative position as a priority of creative freedom over the rigorous ideological attitudes. Some previously unknown archival materials and Levin’s personal documents from the CPSU’s archive from the period of the ‘campaign against cosmopolitanism and anti-patriotism’ reconstruct this stage of Levin’s life and shed new light on the establishment and work of the Sovetsky Pisatel publishing house, and the Literaturnyi Kritik and Literaturnoye Obozreniye journals along with new details of the relationship between the critic, the publishing house and the journals and Anna Akhmatova and Andrey Platonov.

Coming to Terms With the Village: Stalin’s Death and the Reassessment of Rural- Urban Relations in the Soviet Union

In August 1953, the Soviet writer Tikhon Semushkin was sent by Pravda to the countryside to report on the current state of the kolkhoz village. In this article, we use Semushkin’s unpublished travel diaries to study elite perceptions of the countryside and patterns of identity construction in the period of the interregnum between Stalin’s death and the confirmation of Nikita S. Khrushchev as head of the Communist Party. We analyse how in 1953 Soviet citizens reconsidered their place within Soviet society and how the writer acted as a chronicler and participant in this process. Semushkin’s notes prove that regardless of the revolutionary imperative of the Soviet project, the mental framework defining the rural population’s place within a broader social context and ideas about peasant backwardness survived through the political turning points of the early 20th century. However, while narrative conventions from the late Imperial period lived on in depictions of the countryside, the end of Stalinism also induced a gradual reassessment of rural-urban relations. In showing how Stalin’s death shattered established certainties of social belonging and patterns of thinking about the village, we argue that the interregnum was not only a political episode, but also a period of individual and collective searching for orientation at all levels of Soviet society.

A Forgotten Detail in the Cultural Landscape: a Ukrainian Version of Russian Formalism? National Identity, Avant-garde and Ideology in Literary Discussions in Soviet Ukraine (1920s–1930s)

The 1920s in the Soviet Ukraine are characterised by significant variability of views on the meaning, social significance and mechanism of art and literature, however, all this theoretical and practical variety was limited by political restriction imposed by official communist ideology. Avant-garde groups and movements enriched modernist discussions by drawing attention to the fact that the revolution in arts and literature was of the same nature as political and social revolution. Numerous Soviet writers, poets, artists, philologists, etc. (including Ukrainian writers with their own national agenda) took part in these discussions; many of them were members of different literary movements, groups and organisations – and of course they had a different aesthetic orientation. One of the most important topics of Soviet theoretical discussions in the 1920s was the dualism of “form” and “content” in literature and art. Such discussions were held in Soviet Ukraine as well. Even though we cannot speak about “Ukrainian formalism” as an organised and disciplined aesthetic school, it is important to determine the “Ukrainian version” of correlation between universalist ideas of Russian formalism, internationalist Soviet ideology (in relation to the culture), and forming Ukrainian cultural identity.

Литературные места Кунцево в 20-30-е годы ХХ века

The article discusses the formation after the revolution and Civil war in 20–30-ies of XX century in the town of Moscow region called Kuntsevo and the surrounding areas, which were the center of culture and leisure of the creative intellectuals as writers, poets, literary critics. The author turns out the circumstances of their stay in these places, the attitude towards Kuntsevo landscape and nature, the people of the town. The author opens the subject of the reflection in the intellectuals’ works of sights in Kuntsevo. There are specific examples from the personal lives of figures of literature and culture related to Kuntsevo surroundings, their joint meet- ings, conversations, collective and individual recreation. Special attention is paid to their way of life, family situation, daily life and destiny. E. Bagritsky, A. Gaidar, V. Shalamov, P. Vasiliev lived in Kuntsevo places after the revolution. V. Lugovskoy, M. Gorky, M. Koltsov, P. Zamojski, M. Tsvetaeva and many other representatives of the literary environment came there. The article reflects the emergence of new literary cadres of young people working in local factories, the creation of their literary societies and the manifestation of the keen
 interest in literature. Creative working youth, as a rule, were formed in the folk clubs and palaces of culture. Such clubs existed in almost all Kuntsevo enterprises of pre-revolutionary period as well as enterprises created in the years of industrialization. Special popularity was gained by the clubs “Precepts of Ilyich” and “Dawn” (Vorovskoi club). The study examines the participation of youth in dramatic and literary societies and their meetings with Soviet writers and poets: L. Seifullina, A. Serafimovich, A. Zharov, K. Paustovsky. Articles of working journalists were often published on the pages of factory newspapers. These Kuntsevo societies were the motheland of famous poets as V. Bagritskyand S. Smirnov.

VOKS, Cultural Diplomacy and the Shadow of the Lubianka: Olavi Paavolainen’s 1939 Visit to the Soviet Union

Existing scholarship suggests that Stalin’s Great Terror of 1936–8 seriously undermined Soviet cultural diplomacy and forced its main promoter, the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS), to succumb to the strict control of the party and secret police. By contrast, this article argues that by the spring and summer of 1939 VOKS was recovering from stagnation and reintroducing customs from before the Great Terror. Through a micro-historical analysis of Finnish writer Olavi Paavolainen’s exceptionally long visit to the Soviet Union between May and August 1939, the article demonstrates how case studies of select VOKS operations can explain many of the dilemmas and peculiarities of Soviet cultural diplomacy during the thus far scantily researched 1939–41 period. By focusing on the interactions between Paavolainen, the VOKS vice-chairman Grigori Kheifets and Soviet writers, the article illustrates that after the purges, VOKS continued its efforts to disseminate a positive and controlled image of Soviet life by complex means that linked propaganda with network-building. Finally, the article highlights the role of individuals in cultural diplomacy and explores how an outsider perceived the Great Terror’s effects on Soviet cultural intelligentsia.

Ukrainian Writers’ Colonies: Subculture of Ukrainian Soviet Writers

The research discusses an episode of the everyday life of Ukrainian Soviet writers – their stay at writers’ colonies, called “Budynky tvorchosti pysmennykiv”. Written mainly on the basis of the author’s fieldwork (observation and interviewing), the article deals with the structure of the writers’ community and its main features.

Exploring the hinterlands: avant-garde temporality, socialist realism, and Pogodin’s Aristocrats

Soviet socialist realism is frequently constructed as the death knell of the Russian avant-garde. The combination of vague instructions (mainly concerning the required effect of the work, rather than its formal construction) with severe consequences for non-compliance restricted the appetite for experimentation amongst Soviet writers of the socialist realist era. This article considers the relationship between avant-garde technique and the socialist realist project through a case study of one of the earliest socialist realist plays, Nikolai Pogodin’s Aristocrats (1934–5). Through analysis of the temporal aesthetic underwriting Pogodin’s play, the article explores how avant-garde approaches to temporality continue to influence post-avant-garde play-texts, suggesting a model for the theatrical transitions that occur at the avant-garde hinterlands. Finally, it turns to the production of Pogodin’s play under Nikolai Okhlopkov at the Realistic Theatre and his use of the vortex form as a scenographic idiom. The article concludes by arguing that these hinterland texts, where avant-garde technique serves socialist realist intentions, form a vital moment in understanding how a legacy for Russian avant-garde practice can be defined.

Between the battlefield and the marketplace: International Literature magazine in Britain

ABSTRACTThe article discusses the Soviet literary magazine Internatsionalnaia literatura (International Literature) as a cultural institution, an important part of the intellectual and literary contacts of the Soviet culture of the 1930s in Britain. An organ of the International Union of Revolutionary Writers and later the Union of the Soviet Writers, the magazine sent its English version to Britain and was read by an audience close to the Communist party of Britain, while the magazine’s editors had vast correspondence with their British authors and readers. Taking into account a wide range of archival documents, the article explores the magazine’s distribution in Britain, the attitudes of British left-wing writers toward it and its place in the international literary market.

M. Sholokhov, Revolution and Literature: Is he a Cossack novelist or a Soviet Writer?

M. Sholokhov, Revolution and Literature: Is he a Cossack novelist or a Soviet Writer?

BOOKS OF CAUCASIAN COUNTRIES IN THE MEMORIAL LIBRARY OF ANTANAS VIENUOLIS-ŽUKAUSKAS

Retrospection of the memorial library of Antanas Vienuolis-Žukauskas, a native of Anykščiai, a prose writer, dramatist, apothecary, museologist, a deputy of the Supreme Council of Lithuanian SSR in 1947–1957, especially the part of publications which were one way or another related to the Caucasus, has given us an incentive to conduct a deeper and broader investigation. The information about A. Vienuolis-Žukauskas and his traces left in the Caucasus during his youth was recorded and emphasized in the press during the Soviet period already, often implying at that point hidden intentions of soviet ideologists. However, a deeper insight in their content has revealed that this side of the writer’s biography is rather shadowy and there are many unanswered or deliberately veiled questions. Therefore, the article strives to attain two principal goals on the basis of the published and unpublished sources: 1) to disclose how the Caucasus is directly associated to the biography of A. Vienuolis-Žukauskas and what its influence was on the writer’s creative work in his youth and post-war period; 2) referring to the books dedicated to A. Vienuolis-Žukauskas by the Caucasian authors and to other publications related to the Caucasus from his memorial library to investigate when and how they were acquired, and to reveal the relationship between the writer and dedication authors. The research enabled us to reveal the less known or entirely unknown sides both of the biography of A. Vienuolis-Žukauskas and of his creation, as well as to correct certain fallacious statements institutionalized in our historiography throughout several decades and finally to open the doors into his private space in the middle of the 40ies and 50ies. The collected sources and their interpretation evidenced that the Caucasus exerted a great influence upon his work and left a conspicuous impact upon all the creative path of the writer. It may be stated that this pathway started and was broken right in the Caucasus. Books brought by A. Vienuolis-Žukauskas from his travel in the Caucasian republics in post-war years may be considered as an integral part of his biography and witnesses of his friendship with different famous authors from the Caucasian republics. Today, a sheaf of eloquent congratulatory telegrams and letters to commemorate the 70th and 75th jubilees of the writer sent by the Union of Soviet Writers as well as by individual authors and now held in the Anykščiai Memorial Museum of Antanas Baranauskas and Antanas Vienuolis-Žukauskas displays his relations with the writers of the Caucasian and other republics too. Undoubtedly, A. Vienuolis-Žukauskas won the recognition and respect of the Caucasian authors namely by his legendary Caucasian legends translated into different languages.

The Representation of the African American as Colonial Oppressed in Texts of the Soviet Interwar Years

The article provides an overview of the representation of the African American in Soviet publications, looking both at works by Soviet writers and at works by African Americans. It discusses an evolution in the representation of both Africans and African Americans in published texts from prerevolutionary exoticist conventions, as in Pierre Loti, or emphasis on their spirituality, as in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, to emphasizing their debased position and the class nature of their oppression. The article discusses the impact of developments in Soviet policies and ideology on this evolution, such as the “Black Belt” doctrine of the Comintern, and traces their impact in works by Claude McKay and Richard Wright, and also in the travelogues of Soviet visitors to the United States, such as Boris Pil'niak, and Il'ia Il'f and Evgeny Petrov.

The missing years: Yiddish writers in Soviet Bialystok, 1939–41

ABSTRACTFrom September 1939 to June 1941, Bialystok was a Soviet city that housed a group of Yiddish literati, notably refugees from German-occupied areas of Poland. This article describes the process of selecting among them people who professionally and ideologically fit criteria for integration into the Soviet Writers' Union. Special attention is paid to interactions between the refugee writers and their Soviet counterparts. Loyal Soviet citizens prior to their postwar repatriation to Poland and in most cases, sooner or later, emigrants to Israel, Western Europe, or America, these writers often appear in their memoirs to be critics of the Soviet regime. The Bialystok group of refugees included future leaders of central Jewish institutions in post-1945 Poland: Hersh Smolar (1905–93), chair of the Jewish Social–Cultural Association and editor of the Yiddish newspaper Folks-shtime (People's voice), David Sfard (1905–81), director of the publishing house Yidish-bukh (Yiddish Book) and editor of the journal Yidishe shriftn (Yiddish writings), and Ber (Bernard) Mark, director of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and editor of its journal Bleter far geshikhte (Folios for history).

Soviet Translator Alexander Romm: An Experience of Literary Depersonalization

The article addresses a literary biography of Alexander Ilyich Romm (1893 – 1943), philologist, poet and translator, focusing on the last years of Romm’s life when he had been an active member of the Translators Section of the Union of Soviet Writers, involved in producing translations of politically committed poetry both from foreign languages and from national languages of the Soviet Union. Drawing upon Andre Lefevere’s idea of translation as rewriting and manipulation, the article takes a close look at the process of production and stylization of such translations. Surviving archival documents, including Romm’s diaries, offer a glimpse of how harrowing for him was an experience of depersonalization translators were subjected to in the Soviet literary system

Vaingurt, Julia Wonderlands of the Avant-Garde: Technology and the Arts in Russia of the 1920s (review)

REVIEWS 333 Polonist and anti-Catholic motivation (p. 192), and secures Ippolit Kirillovich’s ‘Roman preference for civilization’ (p. 193). Reading The Brothers Karamazov in the light of Blake’s study offers a completely new adventure in interpreting Dostoevskii’s work. Slawisches Institut H.-J. Gerigk Heidelberg University Vaingurt, Julia. Wonderlands of the Avant-Garde: Technology and the Arts in Russia of the 1920s. StudiesinRussianLiteratureandTheory.Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 2013. xii + 308 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $45.00. Ever since Boris Groys’s The Total Art of Stalinism first appeared in 1988, the Soviet avant-garde has been implicated in the Stalinization of Russian society. Totalitarianism, according to Groys, was a logical, almost inevitable consequence of the utopian change demanded by radical artists. Now while the Red Queen has her Stalinist side, no-one has ever contended that Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland was a formula for aesthetic dictatorship. Carroll’s final lines suggest that the role of creative invention is self-perpetuation, not social change; Alice’s imaginative gifts will in turn inspire her children ‘with the dream of Wonderland’. Julia Vaingurt’s innovative and exhaustively researched monograph effectively sets out to reclaim Wonderland on behalf of the Russian avant-garde. It enriches current scholarly investigation (by Anindita Banerjee and Katarina Clark, among others) of the unexpected diversity and internationalism of early Soviet culture. Wonderlands of the Avant-Garde contends, countering Groys, that Soviet avant-garde aesthetic production of the 1920s was concerned with inspiring wonder for its own sake, or in Vaingurt’s words, with ‘contemplative rather than constructive aims’ (p. 13). Vaingurt uses the Aristotelian concept of techne (craftsmanship as self-sufficient good) to disassociate technology from instrumentality, inventiveness from use-value. Without denying that many artists (for example, most Constructivists) enthusiastically supported cultural engineering, she stresses the mysterious lack of pragmatism or utility in many major 1920s ideas, whether celebrated or obscure, from Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International to the floating apartment buildings designed by a Vkhutemas student in 1928. These draft projects were not blueprints for the socialist future: they were, Vaingurt argues, challenges aimed at the transitional present. Wonderlands of the Avant-Garde is organized in three sections, each exploring a different aspect of technology. ‘Homo Faber, Home Ludens’ examines physical technology — self-engineering — in the biomechanical SEER, 94, 2, APRIL 2016 334 philosophies of the proletarian poet Aleksei Gastev and the director Vsevolod Meierkhol´d. Although the work of both Gastev and Meierkhol´d appeared to uphold Soviet hierarchies of mechanization and rationality, Vaingurt shows how both men blundered into cognitive quandaries of the kind constructed by other, less conformist artists. Gastev propounded psychological ‘selfcolonization ’, where individuals exchanged personal and national identity for a state of trans-national super-being. But this state of being, Vaingurt points out, was by definition too international to remain truly Soviet, making Gastev’s brand of utopia ultimately unacceptable in Stalin’s Russia. A similar paradox problematized Meierkhol´d’s 1922 production of The Magnanimous Cuckold; here, the play’s form contravened its content. Biomechanics required conscious control over physical action and emotion, yet the titular cuckold’s attempt to dominate his wife’s body backfires ludicrously. Meierkhol´d’s staging of the play, Vaingurt argues, thus became a case study in the futility of power, querying both the philosophy behind biomechanics, and utopian Soviet hopes to rationalize physiology and psychology. The book’s central, and most convincing, section on ‘Alternative Technologies’ introduces flawed, unreal and dangerous machines. Here, Vaingurt re-interprets the critiques of utopian politics in Evgenii Zamiatin’s We and Iurii Olesha’s Envy; she examines the subtle privileging of unrealizable structures in the architectural fantasies of Tatlin and Velimir Khlebnikov, and their gradual rejection of machine technology (Tatlin’s glider Letatlin, for instance, evokes the organic shape of a bird’s wings). The final section, ‘The Homeland of Technology’ returns to an earlier theme of American culture as the focus of Russian desire. In two intriguing and informative chapters, Vaingurt analyses American travelogues by Soviet writers from Gor´kii and Maiakovskii to Il´f and Petrov, followed by a fresh look at popular fiction and cinema with...

Siegelbaum, Lewis H Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile Siegelbaum, Lewis The Faustian Bargain of the Soviet Automobile (review)

REVIEWS 363 not really enough to rectify this structural tension. But this is an impressive book that has the merit of making the history of Soviet intelligence accessible to a wider scholarly audience. It will be very helpful to teachers and students alike, and also of interest to the more specialist general reader. School of History, University of Kent Philip Boobbyer Siegelbaum, Lewis H. Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2008. xvii + 309 pp. Glossary. Maps. Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Index. $39.95: £20.50. Siegelbaum, Lewis. The Faustian Bargain of the Soviet Automobile. Trondheim Studies on East European Cultures and Societies, 24. The Program on East European Cultures and Societies, Norwegian University of Sciences and Technology, Trondheim, 2008. 32 pp. Notes. NOK39.00 (paperback). These two titles — a full-length academic monograph covering the entire history of the Soviet automobile and an occasional paper focusing on the late Soviet period — offer a welcome fresh perspective on Communist society. Lewis H. Siegelbaumbeginsthelongerbookbyidentifyingatheoreticaltensionbetweenthe collectivist ethos of Soviet ideology and the car as ‘an object of individual desire, a mobile private space’ (p. ix). Indeed, we learn that Stalin preferred to distribute personal cars to Soviet notables, while Khrushchev promised the Soviet people an abundance of taxis and rental cars, rather than privately-owned vehicles. The Soviet automobile revolution came late, in the 1970s, and in connection with the Brezhnev regime’s focus on consumer goods. For decades the Soviet automobile industry served first of all the state-run economy by producing trucks; 1972 was the first year that it churned out more cars than trucks. Professor Siegelbaum brought to this project his considerable expertise in the social and labour history of the Soviet Union. The monograph’s chapters offer as much information on the construction of car factories, their workforce, and the drivers of their cars as they do on the cars themselves. The book is organized thematically rather than chronologically. The first three chapters are devoted to three major car factories: ZIS (later ZIL) in Moscow, GAZ in Gor´kii, and VAZ in Togliatti. There is inevitably some repetition across the chapters, because the first two factories were constructed during the First Five-Year Plan and all three faced similar challenges during the post-Soviet period. At the same time, the cars they produced marked different periods and different social trends in Soviet history. In Siegelbaum’s apt phrase, ZIS limousines represented ‘the Soviet state on wheels’ (p. 27). Originally based on Packard, they were produced using imported American presses and cutting and stamping machines, as well as the slave labour in a Gulag camp that specialized in leather upholstery. These large SEER, 94, 2, APRIL 2016 364 and heavy luxury cars served the top Soviet brass. Stalin was driven around in an armour-plated seven-ton ZIS-115; he also recommended a change in the insignia on the grill for the entire ZIS series, thereby perhaps underscoring his symbolic ownership of the brand. After all, ZIS stood for the Stalin Factory. The car factory built in the city of Gor´kii was the first attempt at establishing a Soviet Detroit. The largest automobile plant in Europe when it was completed in 1932, it was the result of Soviet cooperation with the Ford Company. The famous M-1 model, or ‘Emka’, in Soviet parlance, was copied from the 1933 Ford V8 Model 40, but supplied with a four-cylinder engine. After the war GAZ made the first Soviet car that ordinary consumers could purchase, the M-20 Pobeda (‘Victory’). The later Volga models, the M-21 and M-24, were the preferred means of transportation for mid-ranking bureaucrats and successful Soviet writers. It was the Togliatti project that propelled the Soviet Union into the age of mass car production. A mega-deal with Fiat in 1966 resulted in the construction of an integrated car factory in the new city conveniently renamed after an Italian Communist leader. The factory marked Lenin’s 100th birthday in 1970 by producing the first VAZ-2101 Zhiguli cars (based on the Fiat-124 and exported under the name Lada). By 1974 the factory was producing 660,000...