Writing the nation after Stalin : literature and the collapse of the Soviet Union / Erin Hutchinson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hutchinson, Erin, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nationalism in literature.

Soviet literature--History and criticism.

Soviet literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource : illustrations

illustration

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, [2026]

Summary:

In 1967, the Russian writer and dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, 'Looking back, even a fool would have been able to predict it today: the Soviet regime could certainly have been breached only by literature.' 'In Writing the Nation after Stalin', Erin Hutchinson tells the story of a multi-ethnic cohort of young Soviet writers from villages who set out to remedy a social injustice - the oppression of the peasantry under Stalin - and ended up challenging the Soviet state. Their literary works, published within the official system, praised national values and traditional village culture and helped fuel a resurgence of ethno-nationalism in the USSR. In the late 1980s, several village writers became leaders in the nationalist movements that helped trigger the break-up of the Soviet Union. In a communist country that prided itself on being 'the most well-read in the world', literature was always political.

Contents:

Stalinism and the making of the village writer, 1928–1953

Telling the truth about the Soviet village: the early thaw in Moscow as a reaction to late Stalinism, 1952–1957

From the Soviet periphery to Moscow: village writers and the thaw in the national republics, 1953–1966

The Vologda network: Sergei Vikulov and the rise of the rural periphery in Russian literature, 1950–1970

Village writers and the preservation of “monuments of history and culture,” 1959–1972

The suffering of the nation: writing about peasant experiences of late Stalinism, 1965–1973

Live and remember: memory, mankurts, and nationalism from Brezhnev to Andropov, 1972–1984

Defending the nation: writer-activists during glasnost, 1985–1991.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (Oxford Academic, viewed on September 1, 2026).

Other Format:

Print version : Hutchinson, Erin. Writing the nation after Stalin.

ISBN:

9780198985587

0198985584

OCLC:

1602858447

Publisher Number:

CIPO000415310

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license