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The Serapion Brothers: An Early Soviet Controversy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2018

William Edgerton
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Extract

A. A. Ždanov's reference to the Serapion Brothers in his famous 1946 speech recalls a lively chapter in the early history of Soviet literature. Mikhail Zoščenko, who bore the brunt of Ždanov's attack, and the poet Tikhonov, who got off with a scolding and the loss of his position as president of the Union of Soviet Writers, were both among the twelve young writers who formed the Serapion Brotherhood in 1921.

They were a remarkable group. When their first meeting was held on February 1, 1921, all but one of their number were under the age of thirty, and three were not yet out of their teens. One of the youngest was their unofficial leader, Lev Lunc, whose death in 1924, just one week after his twenty-third birthday, cut short the career of the man whom Gor'kij considered to be the most promising dramatist in Russia.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , February 1949 , pp. 47 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1949

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References

1 A. A. Ždanov, “On the Errors of the Soviet Literary Journals Zvezda and Leningrad” English translation in Political Affairs, XXV, No. 2 (December, 1946), 1112-31.

2 Maxim Gor'kij, “Lev Lunc” (obituary), Beseda, No. 5 (June, 1924), pp. 61-62.

3 Bol'šaja Sovetskaja Enciklopedija (1945), LI, 421.

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51 Ibid., p. 372.