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Soviet National Literature in the New Soviet Encyclopedia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Peter Yershov
Peter Yershov*
Affiliation:
University of Odessa
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Extract

The articles on the literature of the Soviet peoples form only a part of the vast materials collected in the two editions of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. Yet, like a microcosm, they reflect the characteristics of the whole and bear the impress of changing policy and interpretation. A comparison of these articles in the first edition and in those volumes of the second that have already been printed may, therefore, be of interest.

In line with the official policy of national linguistic autonomy, the first edition of the Encyclopedia contained both general accounts of the literature of the various national groups and accounts of individual authors. Most important among the groups discussed were the Abkhazians, Adygeyans, Bashkirs, the Buryat-Mongols, Udmurts, and the Tatars. The material in the volumes of the second edition that were available for examination appears at first glance to be much richer. The literature of twenty-nine Soviet nationalities is discussed: all of them possess their own written languages and can point to certain literary achievements. The treatment of the literature of the Avars is completely new to the second edition and the treatment of individual writers of other national groups much more detailed.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , February 1954 , pp. 89 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1954

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References

1 The first edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, started under the editorial guidance of O. J. Schmidt, appeared from 1926 to 1949. The second edition, with Academician S. I. Vavilov as chief editor, began publication in 1949 and is scheduled to be completed in 1955. By early 1953, fourteen volumes had appeared.

2 These nationalities are: Abkhazian, Adygej, Adzar, Armenian, Avar (Dagestan and Lak), Azerbaijan, Bashkir, Buryat-Mongol, Belorussian, Chuvash, Estonian, Georgian, Kara-Kalpak, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Latvian, Lithuanian, Moldavian, Mordvinian, Osetin, Russian, Tadzhik, Tatar, Tunguz, Turkmen, Udmurt, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Yakutian.

3 Name entries on authors of the following nationalities appeared for the first time in the second edition: Adygej, Avar, Chuvash, Kara-Kalpak, Kirghiz, Latvian, Lithuanian, Moldavian, Mordvinian, Osetin, Tadzhik, Tunguz, Turkmen, Udmurt, Uzbek, and Yakutian.

4 Russian influence is credited, for instance, with changing the Buryat-Mongol system of versification and contributing to the disappearance of alliteration and the use of tonic meter and rhyme.

5 Neither in this article nor anywhere else, is there any mention of the important religious influence.

6 Of these twelve, eight are contemporary authors of whom one, Vurgun, is singled out for specially lengthy treatment as “an old member of the Party,” author of a play about the young Stalin, and an ardent fighter against the “Anglo-American warmongers.”

7 The same pattern of selection is evident in entries on authors of other nationalities. In the Armenian article, for example, the eight Armenian Soviet authors are described as having taken the “straight road” of socialist realism.

8 The following were mentioned: Olekhnovič, Žilunovič, Kudelka, L. Rodzevič, I. Lucevič, K. Mickevic, and A. Novin.

9 Also among the thirty-three literary names missing in the new edition but dealt with in the first are: Abramov (Populist); Abramovič (critic-aesthete); Abramovič (pen-name “Mendele Moikher Sforim”—the grandfather of Jewish literature); Afanas'ev-Čužbinskij (Russian-Ukrainian writer); Agapov (a Populist); Akselrod (revolutionary and critic); Aleksandrovskij (proletarian poet); Allegro (poetess); Altaev (writer for children); Al'bov (novelist); P. Arskij (proletarian writer); R. Arskij (political writer); Artamonov (poet); Ašukin (writer for children) ; Auslender (writer); Barancevič (novelist); Barykova (poet); Blakitnyj (Ukrainian writer); Bubnov; Burljuk (Futurist poet); Gastev (proletarian poet); Gerasimov (poet); Valentinov (Social-Democratic writer); B. Varneke (historian of the Russian theater); Vatson (critic and translator); Vasilenko (Ukrainian historian); Vetrinskij (Češikhin—critic); Vol'skij (revolutionary and writer); and Vonljarljarskij (writer). Not mentioned in either edition are the novelists Aizman and Mark Aldanov.

10 It would be important to determine the value of the second edition in the exact sciences. As regards the other “ideological” sections of the Encyclopedia, they seem to resemble the sections on literature, art, and economics. On the latter, see A. Natov, “Voprosy èkonomiki v novom izdani Bol'šoj Sov. Ènciklopedii” [Economic Questions in the New Edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia], Vestnik Instituta po izučeniju istorii i kul'tury SSSR [Herald of the Institute for the Study of the History and Culture of the USSR], No. 2, 1952 (Munich), pp. 183–88.