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New Editions of Soviet Belles-Lettres: a Study in Politics and Palimpsests

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Maurice Friedberg
Maurice Friedberg*
Affiliation:
Department of Slavic Languages and the Russian Institute, Columbia University
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Extract

Very close ties exist between Soviet belles-lettres and the official “line” of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The organizations of Soviet writers are important connecting links between individual authors and Party authorities; before a literary work is submitted for final approval to the Glavlit, the official Government censorship, it is frequently discussed by the relevant committee of the Union of Soviet Writers.

The propaganda value attached to literature by the Soviet leaders was once eloquently expressed by Karl Radek, who said that although the pen cannot replace the rifle, it can mobilize and multiply these rifles. Perhaps some such sentiment, rather than aesthetic insight, was behind the statement generally attributed to Stalin, in which a writer is called “an engineer of the human soul.”

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , February 1954 , pp. 72 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1954

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References

1 This article is an outgrowth of a study of different editions (their number for each work varying between two and seven) of thirty novels, twenty-three dramas, twenty volumes of poetry and fifteen volumes of short stories. These works were written by forty-one Soviet authors, and include samples of diverse genres: historical and contemporary novels, lyric verse, drama, children's literature, humor, and others. The earliest edition was that of 1922, while the latest was published in 1951.

2 A curious parallel to this tendency in the belles-lettres is found in the 1948 edition of Bol'saja sovetskaja ènciklopedija, which includes articles on “Trotskyism,” “Trotskyites,” but none on Trotsky himself.

3 Once again, we find similar revisions in the different versions of the encyclopedias. The 1929 edition of the Bol'šaja sovetskaja ènciklopedija includes a biography of Andrej Vyšinskij, which contains numerous references to his activities in the Menshevist party. The 1934 issue of the Malaja sovetskaja ènciklopedija refers somewhat ambiguously to Vysinškij's taking part in a “revolutionary movement” before his joining the Bolshevist Party in 1920, while the 1951 edition of Bol'šaja sovetskaja ènciklopedija bypasses in complete silence Vysinškij's activities before 1920, when he joined the Bolshevist Party.

4 Internationalism, to be sure, is still an official part of Soviet ideology, and the C.P.S.U. program adapted at the Nineteenth Party Congress in 1952 stresses that one of the Party's aims is to educate the people in the spirit of internationalism. The Soviets make extensive usage of internationalist ideology for the purpose of Communist expansionism among the toilers of the world. It seems therefore that internationalism is now a doctrine destined for export, rather than domestic consumption.

5 Fogelevič, L. G., ed., Osnovnye direktivy i zakonodatel'stvo o pečati (sistematičeskij sbornik) (5th ed., OGIZ, Gosizdat “Sovetskoe zakonodatel'stvo,” 1935), pp. 65–67.Google Scholar

6 Panfërov, Fëdor, Bruski (Moscow, Gosizdat, 1936), Book III, p. 352.Google Scholar

7 Tolstoj, Aleksej, Polnoe sobranie sočinenij (Moscow, OGIZ, 1947), VII, 667–69.Google Scholar

8 Sobolev, Leonid, Morskaja duša (Moscow, Goslitizdat, 1943), p. 30.Google Scholar

9 Ibid. (Moscow, Gosizdat, 1951), p. 32.

10 Karavaeva, Anna, Izbrannye proizvedenija (Gosizdat, 1933), p. 164.Google Scholar

11 Karavaeva, , Izbrannoe (Moscow, OGIZ, 1947), p. 160.Google Scholar

12 Kassil, Lev, The Land of Shvambrania, Glass, Sylvia and Guterman, Norbert, trs. (New York, Viking Press, 1935), pp. 34–36.Google Scholar

13 Kassil', Izbrannye povesti (Moscow, Sovetskij Pisatel', 1948), p. 30.

14 Kassil', ibid., 1935 edition, p. 62.

15 Kassil', ibid., 1948 edition, p. 46.

16 Svirskij, Aleksej, Istorija moej Žizni (Moscow, Sovetskij Pisatel', 1936), p. 214.Google Scholar

17 Ibid. (Moscow, OGIZ, 1947), p. 172.

18 Bill’-Belocerkovskij, Vladimir, P'esy (Moscow-Leningrad, Gosizdat “Iskusstvo,” 1940), p. 273.Google Scholar

19 Ibid. (Moscow-Leningrad, Gosizdat “Iskusstvo,” 1950), p. 208.

20 Sergeev-Censkij, Sergej, Sevastopol'skaja strada (Moscow, OGIZ, 1942), p. 84.Google Scholar

21 Ibid. (Moscow, Sovetskij Pisate', 1950), I, 207.

22 Forš, Olga, Radiščev (Leningrad, Gosizdat, 1939), pp. 234–36.Google Scholar

23 Forš, Istoričeskie romany (Moscow-Leningrad, OGIZ, 1949), p. 455.

24 Forš, op. cit., 1939 edition, p. 313.

25 Forš, op. cit., 1949 edition, p. 528.

26 Sergeev-Censkij, op. cit., 1942 edition, p. 31.

27 Ibid., 1950 edition, I, 73.

28 Forš, op. cit., 1939 edition, pp. 289–90.

29 Forš, op. cit., 1949 edition, p. 505.

30 Panfërov, Bruski (Gosizdat, 1931), Part II, p. 283.

31 Ibid. (Moscow, Sovetskij Pisatel', 1949), Books I–II, p. 412.

32 Lidin, Vladimir, Sobranie sočinenij (Moscow-Leningrad, Gosizdat, 1929), V, 14.Google Scholar

33 Lidin, lzbrannoe (Sovetskij Pisatel', 1948), p. 9.

34 Karavaeva, Ogni (Moscow, Sovetskij Pisatel', 1944), pp. 175–76. Compare the quotation of Whitman in Karavaeva with the text of the “Song of the Exposition” in Walt Whitman, selected and with notes by Mark Van Doren (New York, Viking Press, 1945), pp. 328–29.

35 Karavaeva, “Ogni,” Rodina (Moscow, Sovetskij Pisatel', 1951),p. 155.

36 Panfërov, op. cit., 1931 edition, pp. 265–66.

37 Ibid., 1949 edition, p. 469.

38 Karavaeva, Izbrannye proizvedenija, 1933 edition, p. 92.

39 Karavaeva, Izbrannoe, 1947 edition, p. 94.

40 Ljaško, Nikolaj, Minučaja smert’ (Moscow, Sovetskaja Literatura, 1933), p. 82.Google Scholar

41 Ljaško, Izbrannoe (Moscow, Sovetskij Pisatel', 1949), p. 59.

42 Panfërov, Bruski (Gosizdat, 1934), Book I, pp. 165–66.

43 Fëdor Gladkov, Cement (Moscow-Leningrad, Zemlja i Fabrika, 1927), p. 143.

44 The 1944 and 1951 editions of Cement (“Cement,” Izbrannoe [Moscow, OGIZ, 1944] and Cement [Moscow, Gosizdat, 1951]) are almost identical with the 1941 edition; all of the major revisions were effected before 1940, although some “finishing touches” were added later.

45 The Current Digest of the Soviet Press, I, No. 33 (1949), 5–6.

46 Timofeev, L. I., Teorija literatury (Moscow, 1948), p. 302.Google Scholar