Socialist Realism in Central and Eastern European Literatures under Stalin: Institutions, Dynamics, Discourses

by Evgeny Dobrenko (Editor), Natalia Jonsson-Skradol (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783086979
Publisher:	Anthem Press
Publication date:	02/15/2018
Series:	Anthem Series on Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies , #1
Pages:	372
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Introduction, Evgeny Dobrenko and Natalia Jonsson- Skradol; Part 1. INSTITUTIONS; Chapter One How Socialist Realism Was Exported to Eastern European Countries and How They Got Rid of It, Hans Günther; Chapter Two Literary Monopolists and the Forging of the Post– World War II People’s Republic of Letters, Rossen Djagalov; Chapter Three Once Dr Faul Has Left: The Agony of Socialist Realism in Poland, 1955– 56, Evgeny Dobrenko; Chapter Four From Literature Censored by Poets to Literature Censored by the Party: Censorship in the Czech Literary Culture of 1945– 55, Pavel Jan á č ek; Chapter Five The Demise of ‘Socialist Realism for Export’ in 1947: VOKS Receives John Steinbeck and Robert Capa, Vladislav M. Zubok; Chapter Six The Soviet Factor and the Institutionalization of Bulgarian Literature after World War II, Tatiana V. Volokitina; Chapter Seven Cultural Renewal in Eastern Germany – Mission Impossible for Soviet Cultural Offi cers and German Anti- Fascists?, Anne Hartmann; Part 2. DYNAMICS; Chapter Eight Socialist Writers and Intellectuals in a Divided Nation: The Early GDR Experience, Helen Fehervary; Chapter Nine Stalinism’s Imperial Figure: Hero or Clerk of the Pax Sovietica?, Benjamin Robinson; Chapter Ten From Avant- Garde to Socialist Realism: Continuities and Discontinuities in Hungarian and Romanian Literature, Imre J ó zsef Bal á zs; Chapter Eleven The Short Life of Socialist Realism in Croatian Literature, 1945– 55, Ivana Peru š ko; Chapter Twelve Literature in Socialist Yugoslavia: Constructing Collective Memory, Institutionalizing the Cultural Field, David Norris; Chapter Thirteen ‘Yesterday and Tomorrow’: The Forms of the Slovak Literature of Socialist Realism, 1945– 56, René Bílik; Chapter Fourteen Socialist or Realist: The Poetics of Politics in Sovietized Hungary, Melinda Kalmár; Part 3. DISCOURSES; Chapter Fifteen Introducing Socialist Realism in Hungary, 1945– 51: How Politics Made Aesthetics, Tam á s Scheibner; Chapter Sixteen When Writers Turn against Themselves: The Soviet Model and the Bulgarian Experience, 1946– 56, Plamen Doinov; Chapter Seventeen Big Brother’s Gravity: East European Literature in the Mirror of Soviet ‘Thick Journals’ in the Late 1940s, Evgeny Ponomarev; Chapter Eighteen The Coming One: Prolegomena to the Positive Hero of Czech Socialist Realism as a Transforming and Transformed Subject Vít Schmarc; Chapter Nineteen Will Freedom Sing as Beautifully as Captives Sang about It? Reshaping the Croatian Canon, 1945– 55, Nenad Ivić; Chapter Twenty The Salon in the Camp: Friendship Societies and the Literary Public Sphere in the SBZ and Early GDR, Natalia Jonsson- Skradol; Conclusion, Evgeny Dobrenko and Natalia Jonsson- Skradol; List of Contributors; Index.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

‘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

Editorial Reviews

'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

Socialist Realism proves a useful resource for graduate students and scholars interested in Eastern Europe in the second half of the twentieth century from various perspectives—literary, historical, political, cultural and sociological—and it opens the way for new insights into a troubling era.'
— Corina L. Petrescu, 'Hungarian Cultural Studies'. 'e-Journal of the American Hungarian Educators Association', 12 (2019)

This comprehensive and well-organized volume edited by Evgeny Dobrenko and Natalia Jonsson-Skradol is a major new achievement in the study of both a single method by which literature is institutionalized and globalized and its lasting discourses. It is an achievement that builds on the strengths of Dobrenko and Thomas Lahusen’s Socialist Realism Without Shores, the magisterial Sotsrealisticheskii kanon edited by Dobrenko with Hans Günther, and A History of Russian Literary Theory and Criticism: The Soviet Age and Beyond edited by Dobrenko with Galin Tihanov, and also enter into an illuminating dialogue with Tihanov’s award-winning The Birth and Death of Literary Theory: Regimes of Relevance in Russia and Beyond. This new collection features a skillfully arranged set of twenty detailed and lucid chapters by an international group of scholars — Slavonic and East European Review (vol.100, no.1, January 2022); Inessa Medzhibovskaya

From the Publisher