Guiding Soviet Writers: Nurturing versus Browbeating, 1920’s–1940’s
Guiding Soviet Writers: Nurturing versus Browbeating, 1920’s–1940’s

Summary/Abstract: The Bolshevik experiment in engineering an eminent national literature of world renown had multiple and ambitious goals. Fiction was to tell the story of the country’s revolutionary upheaval, letting readers see themselves reflected in a story of sacrifice, heroism, and triumph. Memorable literary heroes would enter the popular imagination, helping to create new cultural mythologies and values. Soviet literature would be a source of national pride at home, while stirring admiration and envy abroad, not only of the country’s social equality, but also of its prizeworthy literature. How could the state help realize this literary vision? In a capitalist democracy, the dominant view would be to leave writers and publishers to their own devices, perhaps offering government funding for selected projects. By contrast, the Bolsheviks’ prioritization of top-down organization led them to think in terms of party-sponsored literary institutions. The most obvious of these— and the first to be operational—was censorship, inherited from the monarchy and made far more stringent. If it seems obvious that censorship itself kills off literary greatness, we should note that the Bolshevik leaders did not make this assumption. They saw, rather, that censorship would be an insufficient tool, because establishing and enforcing boundaries does nothing to ensure the quality of what actually gets produced within those limits. Censorship could excise and patch, but it could not bring good literature into being. No policy or institution could directly bring about a high-quality literature, so it would be necessary to rely on indirect means, re-educating or otherwise influencing the writers who would create it. The question then became, what kinds of institutions should be established for Soviet writers? What should be their core premises, especially when it came to defining writers’ relationship to the party, and the related question of how writers should be treated?

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