The Male Capital and Its Female Provinces: Ivan Olbracht’s O Anně, rusé proletářce (On Anna, the Red Proletarian, 1925)
The Male Capital and Its Female Provinces: Ivan Olbracht’s O Anně, rusé proletářce (On Anna, the Red Proletarian, 1925)

Summary/Abstract: In 1925, St. K. Neumann’s magazine Reflektor published O Anně, rusé proletářce (On Anna, the Red Proletarian), a novel by the Czech author Ivan Olbracht. Its significance for Czechoslovak political literature of the interwar period is commonly compared to the role Fedor Gladkov’s Cement (1925) played in what was later institutionalised as Soviet socialist realism. However, because the label of socialist realism too quickly draws the reader’s attention to typical elements such as positive heroes and political messages, Anna seems to be difficult to approach without bias. Simultaneously, as the novel represents an evidently more straightforward version of literary activism than e. g. the literary avant‑ gardes, it can also be read as a testament to the gridlocked binarity of sexes and corresponding gender roles, as these were characteristic of both conservative circles and the new communist ethics that were imposed by the Comintern in the late 1920s. Together with these dichotomies, the novel testifies to a solidification of the unbridgeable gap between centre and periphery, capital and province. A careful look, however, reveals an interesting gender, spatial and class dynamic behind this reinforcement – a dynamic far more complex than both the label ‘socialist realism’ and the postmodern understanding of modern juxtapositions of genders seem to suggest.

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