BOOK
Socialist Realism in Central and Eastern European Literatures under Stalin
Evgeny Dobrenko | Natalia Jonsson-Skradol
(2018)
Additional Information
Book Details
Abstract
Socialist Realism in Central and Eastern European Literatures' is the first published work to offer a variety of alternative perspectives on the literary and cultural Sovietization of Central and Eastern Europe after World War II and emphasize the dialogic relationship between the ‘centre’ and the ‘satellites’ instead of the traditional top-down approach. The introduction of the Soviet cultural model was not quite the smooth endeavour that it was made to look in retrospect; rather, it was always a work in progress, often born out of a give-andtake with the local authorities, intellectuals and interest groups. Relying on archival resources, the authors examine one of the most controversial attempts at a cultural unification in Europe by providing an overview with a focus on specific case-studies, an analysis of distinct particularities with attention to the patterns of negotiation and adaptation that were being developed in the process.
‘This excellent collection will have a lasting impact on the field: it is the first large-scale examination of socialist realism across Eastern and Central Europe, attentive to its institutional frames, inner dynamics and competition with local cultural traditions. A truly pioneering contribution.’
—Galin Tihanov, George Steiner Professor of Comparative Literature, Queen Mary University of London, UK
This volume brings together articles written by experts in the literary history of Central and Eastern European literatures. The overarching topic is the export of Socialist Realism into Europe after WWII, but the authors are interested not so much in highlighting the generalised, top-down mechanism of the project, as in the particularities of each specific national and cultural context. Research shows that in practice the introduction of the Soviet cultural model was not quite the smooth endeavour that it was intended to be; rather, it was always a work in progress, often born out of a give-and-take with the local authorities, intellectuals and interest groups. Those in charge negotiated the precarious terrain of local cultural and political controversies, caught between tradition and innovation in some countries, or, in others, between a sincere interest in the new concept of art and a complete refusal to accept new rules. Paradoxically, among all the different experiences of introducing, importing imposing Socialist Realism in the specific national contexts, the one thing in common is that each case was a response to the local conditions, a process of working through the challenge of inscribing a staunch theory into the daily reality of an unfamiliar country, language and culture.
The general approach shared by the authors is based on the premise of there having been a mutual influence between the various forces engaged in the process – be it between the ‘host cultures’ and ‘the centre’ (i.e., the Soviet authorities), traditional groups and advocates of artistic innovations, similar creative movements in different countries, or political rivals and various interest groups from the literary milieu. But the interrelationship between the texts in this collection is also dialogic: selected with a view of complementing each other, often offering different perspectives on the same issue. Thus, the socialist realist episode in the Yugoslav arts and letters can be regarded either as a short episode, a foundation of the national myth, or a chapter in the ongoing rivalry between competing parties in the creation of a national canon (Peruško, Norris, Ivić). The Czech case can be seen as exemplary strenghtening of traditional pre-war censorship mechanisms or as an awkward attempt to accommodate the Soviet version of a new positive hero (Janáček, Schmarc). The role of leftist intellectuals returning from exile, their interactions with Soviet representatives, as well as the framing of these interactions in the national cultural debate in East Germany and Hungary were both similar and distinctly different (Hartmann, Fehervary, Robinson, Skradol; Scheibner, Kalmár, Balázs). Even in the case of the loyal Soviet satellite Bulgaria, Soviet style institutions can be analysed differently, depending on whether one takes a synchronic view at the time of their imposition, or a diachronic view, observing their evolution over time (Volokitina, Doinov). At the same time, Soviet efforts directed at the creation of a unified socialist cultural sphere were quite versatile, and by no means limited to activites in specific countries (Zubok, Djagalov, Ponomarev). Finally, when it comes to the demise of Socialist Realism as a Pan-European project, having a country-specific perspective next to a more general, European picture is productive for an assessment of the true significance of the events in question (Dobrenko, Günther).
The texts are divided into sections which reflect the organising principle of the volume: an overview with a focus on specific case-studies and an analysis of distinct particularities with attention to what patterns of negotiation and adaptation were being developed in the process. Most of the contributions rely on archival resources, often previously unexplored, and all of them place the issue they are concerned with into a broader institutional, social and cultural context.
Evgeny Dobrenko is professor of Russian and Slavonic Studies, University of Sheffield, UK. He is the author, editor or co-editor of twenty books and numerous articles on Soviet and post-Soviet literature and culture.
Natalia Jonsson-Skradol is a research associate at the University of Sheffield, UK. Her work focuses on unconventional approaches to discursive practices of repressive regimes – mostly Stalinism, but also German and Italian fascism.
"This volume’s transnational mosaic of contributions allows scholars to perceive a new way of thinking about Stalinist culture, as well as the culture it bequeathed in its wake.
— Pavel Khazanov, 'The Russian Review' Volume 77, Issue 4, October 2018 Pages 645-692"
Table of Contents
Section Title | Page | Action | Price |
---|---|---|---|
Cover | Cover 1 | ||
Front Matter | i | ||
Half title | i | ||
Series Page | ii | ||
Title page | iii | ||
Copyright information | iv | ||
Table of contents | v | ||
Acknowledgements | ix | ||
Chapter int-20 | 15 | ||
Introduction | 1 | ||
Notes | 13 | ||
Bibliography | 13 | ||
Part 1 Institutions | 15 | ||
Chapter One How Socialist Realism Was Exported to Eastern European Countries and How They Got Rid of It | 17 | ||
Notes | 23 | ||
Bibliography | 24 | ||
Chapter Two Literary Monopolists and The Forging of The Post–World War Ii People’s Republic of Letters | 25 | ||
Wartime | 26 | ||
Post-war | 29 | ||
Notes | 36 | ||
Archives | 37 | ||
Bibliography | 37 | ||
Chapter Three Once Dr Faul Has Left: the Agony Of Socialist Realism in Poland, 1955–56 | 39 | ||
Literary Practice | 39 | ||
Literary Theory | 46 | ||
Literary Politics | 53 | ||
Notes | 58 | ||
Archives | 60 | ||
Bibliography | 60 | ||
Chapter Four From Literature Censored by Poets to Literature Censored by the Party... | 61 | ||
The Clash on Stalinova Tr.ída: Stalinist Censorship from the Viewpoint of Discontinuity | 61 | ||
The Age of Biblioclasm: Stalinist Censorship from the Viewpoint of Continuity | 65 | ||
Notes | 69 | ||
Bibliography | 69 | ||
Chapter Five the Demise of ‘Socialist Realism For Export’ In 1947: Voks Receives John Steinbeck and Robert Capa | 71 | ||
The Woes of Post-War VOKS | 73 | ||
‘Kremlin Gremlins’ at Work | 78 | ||
Lost in the Cold War | 82 | ||
Notes | 86 | ||
Archives | 88 | ||
Bibliography | 88 | ||
Chapter Six The Soviet Factor and The Institutionalization of Bulgarian Literature After World War Ii | 89 | ||
Notes | 98 | ||
Archives | 98 | ||
Bibliography | 98 | ||
Chapter Seven Cultural Renewal in Eastern Germany – Mission Impossible for Soviet Cultural... | 101 | ||
Among the Ruins | 101 | ||
Behind the Scenes | 102 | ||
During the Cold War | 104 | ||
From the Soviet Universe I | 105 | ||
From the Soviet Universe II | 108 | ||
Notes | 110 | ||
Bibliography | 111 | ||
Part 2 Dynamics | 115 | ||
Chapter Eight Socialist Writers and Intellectuals in a Divided Nation: The Early GDR Experience | 117 | ||
Notes | 127 | ||
Bibliography | 127 | ||
Chapter Nine Stalinism’s Imperial Figure: Hero or Clerk of The Pax Sovietica? | 129 | ||
Pax Romana | 129 | ||
Socialism, Empire and Accommodation | 130 | ||
Ernst Niekisch – On Socialism’s Empire | 133 | ||
In the Soviet Zone | 139 | ||
Conclusion: The Peace of the Clerks? | 141 | ||
Notes | 143 | ||
Bibliography | 145 | ||
Chapter Ten From Avant-Garde to Socialist Realism: Continuities and Discontinuities in Hungarian and Romanian Literature | 147 | ||
The Status of the Avant-Garde and Socialist Realism in the Romanian and Hungarian Contexts | 147 | ||
Shifting Concepts, Conceptual Shifting | 151 | ||
Three Stages of the Shifts between the Avant-Garde and ‘Socialist’ Literature | 152 | ||
Basic Characteristics of the Shifts | 152 | ||
1922: Shifts in the Hungarian Avant-Garde in Exile | 153 | ||
1932: The Bucharest Surrealists Turn to Proletarian Literature | 157 | ||
1948 and After: The Silenced Avant-Garde | 160 | ||
Towards Some Conclusions | 162 | ||
Notes | 163 | ||
Bibliography | 164 | ||
Chapter Eleven The Short Life of Socialist Realism in Croatian Literature, 1945–55 | 165 | ||
Introduction | 165 | ||
Sovietization – a Death Sentence to Croatian Literature? | 166 | ||
Agitprop | 167 | ||
Glorification | 168 | ||
Censorship | 169 | ||
Publishing and Translation | 170 | ||
Literary Strategies of Sovietization: Sovietization as Technique | 171 | ||
Miroslav Krleža’s ‘No’ to Socialist Realism | 175 | ||
Croatian Literature between East and West | 178 | ||
Westernization | 178 | ||
Conclusion | 179 | ||
Notes | 180 | ||
Bibliography | 180 | ||
Chapter Twelve Literature in Socialist Yugoslavia: Constructing Collective Memory, Institutionalizing the Cultural Field | 183 | ||
Yugoslavia: A New Society | 183 | ||
The Function of Literature after 1945: To Be Socialist and Yugoslav | 184 | ||
Creating Narratives of National Memory | 189 | ||
Narrative Breakdown in the 1980s | 193 | ||
Notes | 196 | ||
Bibliography | 197 | ||
Chapter Thirteen ‘Yesterday And Tomorrow’: the Forms of the Slovak Literature of Socialist Realism, 1945–56 | 199 | ||
The East or the West? Actualization of the Slavic and Avant-garde Traditions in Slovak Literature, 1945–49 | 199 | ||
Socialist Realism and the Mechanisms of Its Canonization in Slovak Literature after 1949 | 203 | ||
Genre and Poetological Configurations in Slovak Literature, 1945–56 | 207 | ||
Notes | 213 | ||
Bibliography | 216 | ||
Chapter Fourteen Socialist Or Realist: The Poetics Of Politics In Sovietized Hungary | 217 | ||
Politics | 217 | ||
The Three Great Debates | 221 | ||
Politics and Aesthetics | 227 | ||
Notes | 231 | ||
Bibliography | 233 | ||
Part 3 Discourses | 235 | ||
Chapter Fifteen Introducing Socialist Realism In Hungary, 1945–51: How Politics Made Aesthetics | 237 | ||
‘Freedom to Writers!’ | 237 | ||
The Politics of ‘Doublespeak’ | 239 | ||
Inventing a Domestic Tradition of Socialist Realism: Avant-gardism versus Peasant Sociography | 242 | ||
An Increased Vigilance: Communist Cultural Politics in Transition | 246 | ||
Striving for Unity in Culture and Politics | 248 | ||
Socialist Realism without Lukács | 252 | ||
Conclusion | 253 | ||
Notes | 254 | ||
Bibliography | 256 | ||
Chapter Sixteen When writers turn against themselves: the soviet model... | 261 | ||
The Beginning | 261 | ||
Going Public | 263 | ||
A Bulgarization of Sovietization: Practicing a Ritual, Developing a Genre | 265 | ||
An Epilogue from the 1960s: The Decline of Public Repentance | 276 | ||
Notes | 277 | ||
Bibliography | 278 | ||
Chapter Seventeen Big Brother’s Gravity: East European Literature In The Mirror Of Soviet | 281 | ||
Notes | 296 | ||
Bibliography | 296 | ||
Chapter Eighteen The Coming One: Prolegomena To The Positive Hero Of Czech Socialist Realism... | 297 | ||
Introduction: The Chosen Heirs of National Traditions | 297 | ||
The Identity of the Coming One | 301 | ||
The Ascetic, the Everyman, the Bogatyr, the Son, the Bureaucrat | 304 | ||
The Ascetic Revolutionary | 305 | ||
The Everyman | 306 | ||
The Bogatyr | 307 | ||
The Model Son | 310 | ||
The Efficient Middle-Class Bureaucrat | 313 | ||
Conclusion | 314 | ||
Notes | 316 | ||
Bibliography | 317 | ||
Primary Sources | 317 | ||
Secondary Sources | 317 | ||
Chapter Nineteen Will Freedom Sing as Beautifully as Captives Sang About it? Reshaping the Croatian Canon, 1945–55 | 319 | ||
Notes | 324 | ||
Bibliography | 325 | ||
Chapter Twenty The Salon in the Camp: Friendship Societies and The Literary Public Sphere in The Sbz and The Early Gdr | 327 | ||
Professional Friends and Amateur Salespeople | 329 | ||
Propositions and Prepositions | 330 | ||
Learning to Count (As If) | 335 | ||
Notes | 339 | ||
Bibliography | 341 | ||
Primary Sources | 341 | ||
Secondary Sources | 341 | ||
Conclusion | 343 | ||
Notes | 347 | ||
Bibliography | 347 | ||
End Matter | 349 | ||
List of Contributors | 349 | ||
Index | 355 |