Socialist Realism in Soviet Literature

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter 1
2. Table of Contents 6
3. Acknowledgements 12
4. Preface 13
5. Section One. Russian Culture before the October Revolution
6. Introduction 16
7. Historical-Cultural Contexts
8. Father Gapon and the St. Petersburg Massacre of 1905 26
9. The Assassination of Grand Duke Sergei 31
10. Modernist Views on Art in Essays and Manifestos, Criticism
11. Keys to the Mysteries 40
12. Two Tendencies of Contemporary Lyric Poetry 56
13. Art as Technique 64
14. Slap in the Face of Public Taste 82
15. Declaration of TransrationaL Language 85
16. “The Cherry Orchard” 88
17. ’The Marble Bust’ and Briusov’s Vision of Art 121
18. Vignettes
19. The Marble Bust: A Tramp’s Story 132
20. The Stranger 137
21. When in a Suicidal Anguish 139
22. The Lost Streetcar 140
23. Section Two. From Civil War to Stalinism via Nep
24. Introduction 143
25. Everyday Life: Reality and Dreams
26. Attic Life 155
27. Make way for Winged Eros: A Letter to Working youth Love as a Socio-psychological Factor 160
28. The New Way of Life 173
29. On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters 180
30. Literary Criticism
31. Zamyatin’s WE, the Proletarian Poets and Bogdanov’s Red Star 187
32. Bright Hopes and Dark Insights 206
33. Bulgakov’s Early Tragedy of the Scientist-Creator: An Interpretation of The Heart of a Dog 223
34. The Masks of Mikhail Zoshchenko 241
35. Through the Wrong End of Binoculars: An Introduction to Iurii Olesha 256
36. Two Plays 280
37. Vignettes
38. Brothers, Let’s Glorify the Twilight of Freedom 289
39. A Dogged Sense of Smell 290
40. Nervous People 293
41. Brooklyn Bridge 296
42. Section Three. The Stalinist Period and World War II
43. Introduction 302
44. Memoirs
45. 1930: How Meierkhol’d Put on My Play 320
46. Ivanov-Razumnik, from The Memoirs of Ivanov-Razumnik 323
47. Antonina Pirozhkova, from At His Side: The Last Years of Isaac Babel 329
48. Cultural Contexts
49. The Mystery and the Magic of Stalin’s Power 340
50. The Tower of Babel Undone in a Soviet Pentecost 348
51. Tchaikovsky as Communist Icon 357
52. Power Relationships and Authorship 367
53. Soviet Labor Camps: A Brief History 393
54. Socialist Realism
55. Soviet Literature 407
56. Socialist Realism in Soviet Literature 419
57. The Typology of the Nonexistent 433
58. War Diary
59. Excerpts 440
60. Vignettes
61. We Exist in a Country Grown Unreal and Strange 448
62. Russia, Our Happiness. Russia, Our Light 449
63. This Thing Called Homesickness! A Fable 450
64. No Matter How the Soviet Tinsel Glitters 452
65. Song about our Motherland 453
66. A Word to Comrade Stalin 455
67. Epilogue. After WWII and after Stalin
68. Comments on the Epilogue Selections 457
69. A Denunciation
70. The Central Committee Resolution on the Journals Zvezda and Leningrad 460
71. Memoir
72. Evgenii Evtushenko, from Yevtushenko’s Reader: The Spirit of Elbe; A Precocious Autobiography; Poems 466