Enemies of the people : the destruction of Soviet literary, theater, and film arts in the 1930s / edited and with an introduction by Katherine Bliss Eaton.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Eaton, Katherine Bliss.

Series:

Studies in Russian literature and theory

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Russian literature--20th century--History and criticism.

Russian literature.

Literature and state--Soviet Union.

Literature and state.

Communism and intellectuals.

Censorship.

History.

Soviet Union.

Russian literature--20th century--Censorship.

Censorship--Soviet Union--History.

Theater--Soviet Union--History.

Theater.

Motion pictures--Soviet Union--History.

Motion pictures.

Communism and intellectuals--Soviet Union.

Political persecution--Soviet Union.

Political persecution.

Physical Description:

xxxii, 230 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Evanston, Ill. : Northwestern University Press, 2002.

Summary:

During the Stalin era, waves of terror scattered and destroyed millions of people in the Soviet Union. Among the victims were artists. By the beginning of the 1930s, the censorship machinery had become fixed in its bureaucratic forms and methods and the crackdown on artists entered an intense and savage phase. Enemies of the People offers a reflective overview of the status of the arts and a broad portrait of cultural policies during this period. Eaton's introduction points out the underlying relationships among the essays, touches on the history of censorship in Russia, and discusses the flowering of arts in the late Russian empire. While the introduction provides an excellent historical context for students and nonspecialists, the volume as a whole describes what was lost, speculates about what might have been lost, and discusses how and why some artists or their work survived.

Contents:

Introduction: The Book of Odes and the Book of History / Katherine Bliss Eaton xi

Part I Poetry beyond the Pale

Russian Women's Poetry in the 1930s / Katharine Hodgson 5

Sophia Parnok and Soviet-Russian Censorship, 1922-1933 / Diana Lewis Burgin 31

Overcoming the Destruction of Peasant Russia: The Epic Impulse in Nikolai Kliuev's Late Poetry / J. Alexander Ogden 53

Death of a Poet: Osip Mandelshtam / Victor Terras 75

Part II Creators of Public Art

How the Weasel and the Well Became the Heavens and the Earth: Soviet Yiddish Drama in the 1930s / Jeffrey Veidlinger 91

Bezhin lug (Bezhin Meadow) / Peter Kenez 113

Soviet Youth Theater Grows Up: TRAM in the 1930s / Lynn Mally 127

Vsevolod Meyerhold: The Final Act / Edward Braun 145

Part III The Voices of Silence

Mykola Khvylovy: A Defiant Ukrainian Communist / George Luckyj 165

The Three Deaths of Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel' / Efraim Sicher 179

Death and Disillusion: Il'ia Il'f in the 1930s / Alice Nakhimovsky 205.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

081011769X

OCLC:

47930772