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Soviet Theory of Literature and the Struggle Around Dostoevsky in Recent Soviet Scholarship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

N. N. Shneidman
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Extract

The acceptance of prerevolutionary cultural values in the Soviet Union has been constrained by the development of official interpretation of Marxist-Leninist dogma and its application to the changing historical and political conditions and issues of the day. The evolution of the official Soviet approach to nineteenth-century Russian classical writers thus has been a process influenced by ideological and political considerations. At each stage of development of the Soviet state, Soviet officials devise the necessary literary policy and literary theory with which the values most pertinent to Soviet society at a given stage of its historical development can be extracted from a work of art created in a bourgeois society by an artist alien to the cause of the revolution.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , September 1975 , pp. 523 - 538
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1975

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References

1. Plekhanov, G. V., “Zametki publitsista: ‘Otsiuda i dosiuda, '” in Bychkov, S. P., ed., L. N. Tolstoi v russkoi kritike: Sbornik statei (n.p., 1949), p. 315 Google Scholar.

2. V. I. Lenin o literature i iskusstve, 3rd ed. (Moscow, 1967), p. 297.

3. N. K. Mikhailovsky wrote an article on Dostoevsky entitled “Zhestokii talant.” See F. M. Dostoevskii v russkoi kritike: Sbornik statei (Moscow, 1956), pp. 306-85.

4. F. M. Dostoevskii v russkoi kritike, p. 401.

5. Ibid., p. 434.

6. Ibid., p. 453.

7. For a detailed elaboration of the early history of Dostoevskovedenie in the Soviet Union see Seduro, Vladimir, Dostoyevski in Russian Literary Criticism 1846-1956 (New York, 1969)Google Scholar. More recent studies on Dostoevsky, up to the year 1965, are discussed in a review article by Belknap, R. L., “Recent Soviet Scholarship and Criticism on Dostoevskij: A Review Article,” The Slavic and East European Journal, 11, no. 1 (1967): 75–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Seduro's, V. new study, Dostoevski's Image in Russia Today (Belmont, Mass., 1975)Google Scholar, covers the period from 1956 to 1973.

8. It is necessary to point out that the studies, of Dostoevsky discussed in this article do not exhaust the long list of recent Soviet contributions to contemporary Dostoevskovedenie. The bibliography of works by Dostoevsky and works about Dostoevsky (which have appeared in the Soviet Union in the years 1970-1971) includes 577 different monographs, articles, dissertations, and so forth. See Belov, S. V., “Bibliografiia: Proizvedeniia F. M. Dostoevskogo i literatura o nem,” in Dostoevskii: Materialy i issledovaniia, vol. 1 (Leningrad, 1974), pp. 305–37 Google Scholar. From among the titles included in the above bibliography it is worthwhile to single out the 83rd volume of Literaturnoe nasledstvo (Moscow, 1971), which includes, along with Dostoevsky's unpublished notebooks, comprehensive introductory articles by L. M. Rozenblium and G. M. Fridlender. Rozenblium's article, in particular, sheds new light on the development of Dostoevsky's Weltanschauung—on his relationship and dialogue with Strakhov, Saltykov-Shchedrin, and Mikhailovsky. The publication, in 1972, of the first volumes in the new thirty volume complete edition of Dostoevsky's collected works should also be noted. By the end of 1974 eleven volumes had been published. In 1974 the Institute of Russian Literature of the USSR Academy of Sciences also began publication of a series of research monographs to accompany Dostoevsky's collected works. The first volume of Dostoevskii: Materialy i issledovaniia, mentioned above, was published in 1974.

9. Kirpotin, V. la., Razocharovanie i krushenie Rodiona Raskol'nikova (Moscow, 1970), p. 177 Google Scholar.

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11. Ibid., 'p. 212.

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14. Ibid.

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16. V. la. Kirpotin, p. 445.

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19. Ibid.

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23. Ibid., p. 215.

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30. Ibid., p. 124.

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32. Ibid., p. 24.

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34. Ibid., p. 547.

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37. Karlinsky, Simon, “Dostoevsky as Rorschach Test,” The New York Times Book Review, June 13, 1971 Google Scholar.

38. Ibid., p. 16.

39. M. Khrapchenko, p. 123.

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43. B. Suchkov died early in December 1974. See Literaturnaia gazeta, December 11, 1974, p. 3.

44. For a detailed discussion of the principles of ideinosf, klassovosf, narodnosf, and partiinosf in literature see Shneidman, N. N., “The Russian Classical Literary Heritage and the Basic Concepts of Soviet Literary Education,” Slavic Review, 31, no. 3 (September 1972): 626–38 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45. Abramovich, G. L., Vvedenie v literaturovedenie, 5th ed. (Moscow, 1970), p. 100 Google Scholar.

46. Timofeev, L. I., Osnovy teorii literatury, 3rd ed. (Moscow, 1966), p. 124 Google Scholar.

47. Ibid., p. 121.

48. See V. I. Lenin o literature i iskusstve (Moscow, 1967).

49. Bursov, B. I., L. N. Tolstoi: Seminarii (Leningrad, 1963), p. 33 Google Scholar.

50. A. S. Dolinin, pp. 23-24.

51. Ibid., pp. 24-25.

52. Ibid., p. 80.

53. U. Gural'nik, p. 247.

54. Ibid., pp. 247-48.

55. Ibid., p. 248.

56. Lomunov, K. N., “Dostoevskii i Tolstoi,” Dostoevskii—khudozhnik i myslitel' (Moscow, 1972), p. 511 Google Scholar.

57. Ibid., p. 504.