How Life Writes the Book : Real Socialism and Socialist Realism in Stalin's Russia / Thomas Lahusen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lahusen, Thomas, author.

Contributor:

American Council of Learned Societies.

Series:

ACLS Humanities E-Book.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Azhaev, Vasiliĭ.

Azhaev, Vasiliĭ. Daleko ot Moskvy.

Socialist realism in literature.

Soviet Union--Social conditions.

Soviet Union.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 247 p. ) ill., maps ;

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2019]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

'A gripping, unsettling, and highly original book that turns the making of a Soviet socialist-realist classic-Azhaev's Far from Moscow-into a detective story, and sheds as strange and ambiguous a light on the Stalin era, from gulag to Writers' Union, as one could hope for. Lahusen is a disarmingly low-key scholarly virtuoso who performs simultaneously as an archive-based historian, an interpreter of texts (including Azhaev's own self-organized archive), and a gently relentless biographer whose stalking of his prey is reminiscent of Nabokov. The final chilling paragraph typically economical and understated, is a reminder that the author/investigator, too, is a collaborator in the multiple reworkings of Azhaev's text, and of his life, that How Life Writes the Book has so finely analyzed.'-Sheila Fitzpatrick, University of Chicago 'This is a wonderfully original work: a history of a book, a literary analysis of an age, a montage of a life. Lahusen writes with a postmodern sensibility but without the postmodernist jargon.'-Yuri Slezkine, University of California, Berkeley' Thomas Lahusen has written an imaginative and archivally grounded book that presents the most fascinating picture to date of the literary process that produced canonical works of Socialist Realism and the people who wrote them. How Life Writes the Book is alternatingly chilling and funny as it demonstrates the interpenetration of literary institutions, massive construction projects and the Soviet system of prison camps and slave labor. With this study, as with his earlier Intimacy and Terror, Lahusen continues his own project of revolutionizing our understanding of the Soviet subject and Soviet subjectivity.'-Eric Naiman, University of California, Berkeley 'Lahusen's case study marks a new genre of inquiry into the very nature of socialist realism, a genre which became possible after archives and memory in Russia regained their voice. It shows how life is transformed into Soviet myth.'-Hans G'nther, editor of The Culture of the Stalin Period

Contents:

Front matter

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

SOURCES AND ABBREVIATIONS

NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION

INTRODUCTION

1. PROJECT NO. 15

2. UTOPICS: THE "SECOND BAKU" AND THE "OTHER" OF PLACE

3. THE BEGINNING

4. CAMP FREEDOM: THE OATH; OR, ON TRANSFERENCE-LOVE

5. PERSONAL FILES

6. BORDERLINE I: RUBEZHANSK

7. THE NOTEBOOKS OF KOMSOMOL'SK

8. FAR FROM MOSCOW

9. BORDERLINE II: TO MOSCOW!

10. BETWEEN ENGINEERS: MORE ON TRANSFERENCE-LOVE

11. A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS: FAR FROM MOSCOW AND ITS READERS

12. THE SCREEN

13. BORDERLINE III: THE DEATH OF THE CHEKIST

EPILOGUE. HOW LIFE FINISHES WRITING THE BOOK

APPENDIX

NOTES

INDEX

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-242) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 25. Sep 2019)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781501745232

1501745239

OCLC:

1121054782