Discourses of regulation and resistance : censoring translation in the Stalin and Khrushchev era Soviet Union

207 Pages·2015·1.412 MB·English

by  Sherry, Samantha

Discourses of Regulation and Resistance
Russian Language and Society Series
Series Editor: Lara Ryazanova-Clarke, University of Edinburgh
This series of academic monographs and edited volumes consists of
important scholarly accounts of interrelationships between Russian
language and society, and aims to foster an opinion-shaping ‘linguistic
turn’ in the international scholarly debate within Russian Studies, and
to develop new sociolinguistic and linguo-cultural perspectives on
Russian. The series embraces a broad scope of approaches including
those advanced in sociolinguistics, rhetoric, critical linguistics, (critical)
discourse analysis, linguistic anthropology, politics of language, language
policy and related and interdisciplinary areas.
Series Editor
Dr Lara Ryazanova-Clarke is Senior Lecturer in Russian, and the
Academic Director of the Princess Dashkova Russian Centre, at the
University of Edinburgh.
Editorial Board
Professor David Andrews (Georgetown University)
Professor Lenore Grenoble (University of Chicago)
Professor John Joseph (University of Edinburgh)
Professor Vladimir Plungian (Institute of Russian Language/Institute of
Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences)
Professor Patrick Seriot (Université de Lausanne)
Dr Alexei Yurchak (University of California, Berkeley)
Titles available in the series:
The Russian Language Outside the Nation, ed. Lara Ryazanova-Clarke
Discourses of Regulation and Resistance: Censoring Translation in the Stalin
and Khrushchev Era Soviet Union, Samantha Sherry
French and Russian in Imperial Russia: Language Use among the Russian
Elite, ed. Derek Offord, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke, Vladislav Rjéoutski
and Gesine Argent
French and Russian in Imperial Russia: Language Attitudes and Identity,
ed. Derek Offord, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke, Vladislav Rjéoutski and
Gesine Argent
Visit the Russian Language and Society website at
http://www.euppublishing.com/series/rlas
Discourses of Regulation
and Resistance
Censoring Translation in the Stalin and
Khrushchev Era Soviet Union
Samantha Sherry
© Samantha Sherry, 2015
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
The Tun – Holyrood Road, 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry, Edinburgh EH8 8PJ
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and printed and bound in Great Britain by
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ISBN 978 0 7486 9802 8 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 9803 5 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 1 4744 0365 8 (epub)
The right of Samantha Sherry to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations
2003 (SI No. 2498).
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Note on Transliteration vii
Introduction 1
Part I: Context
1. Translation and Translators in the Soviet Union 17
2. The Soviet Censorship System 45
Part II: Case Studies
3. Censorship in the Stalin Period: Internatsional’naia literatura 67
4. Censorship in the Khrushchev Era: Inostrannaia literatura 102
5. Resisting Censorship 141
Conclusion 171
Bibliography 179
Index 196
Acknowledgements
I owe a debt of gratitude to many people who have helped me bring
this book to completion. Firstly, I must thank Lara Ryazanova-C larke
and Andrei Rogatchevski, who supervised the PhD thesis on which the
book is based. My colleagues at the University of Oxford have provided
me with a stimulating and supportive environment in which to finish
writing, and Polly Jones has been a generous mentor and friend. I have
presented parts of this research at numerous conferences and conven-
tions, and would like to thank all who gave comments and advice. I also
warmly thank the staff of the Russian State Archive of Literature and
Art, the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the archive of the
Memorial Society in Moscow, the M. I. Rudomino all-R ussian Library
of Foreign Literature and the Archive of the East European Research
Centre at the University of Bremen.
Research for this project was made possible by an ESRC PhD schol-
arship awarded by the Centre for Russian, Central and East European
Studies. I am grateful for further funding for fieldwork from the British
Association for Slavonic and East European Studies and the Institute of
Historical Research.
I am particularly grateful to Victoria Irvine and Lucy Weir, who have
provided me with endless inspiration, advice and coffee breaks, for which
I am deeply grateful; and to my brother, Colin, whose encouragement
and humour have been much appreciated. My husband, Ashley Good,
has supported me unfailingly and uncomplainingly throughout. The
greatest debt I owe is to my parents, Anne and Colin Sherry, who have
helped me in more ways than I could ever have hoped for. This book is
dedicated to the memory of my much- missed grandparents, Jean Sherry,
Frank Malone and Jenny Malone.
Note on Transliteration
Transliteration of Cyrillic is carried out according to the Library of
Congress system (without diacritics) throughout, except in those cases
where Russian authors writing in English have opted for alternative
renditions and where Russian authors (such as Gorky) are known by
standard forms.
discourses of regulation and resistance
Introduction
In a memoir written jointly with his wife, Raisa Orlova, the author
and, later, dissident Lev Kopelev recalled their attempts to publish
Western literature in the Soviet Union before their emigration, romanti-
cally portraying the struggle between the intelligentsia and the state that
defined the translation and publication of foreign works:
Officials were scared to ‘open the floodgates’ to harmful Western
influences, but we wanted the cracks in the iron curtain to turn
into breaks and for there to be a flow of new words, new colours,
new sounds and, with them, new thoughts, feelings and ideas
about life. That is what we worked for. And we hoped that these
flows would wash away all the external and internal barriers that
held back the development of our literature, our art and prepare
the soil for the flowering of all spiritual life.1
Foreign literature in translation was eagerly consumed by Soviet readers;2
from the earliest days of the Soviet regime, it not only represented an
‘escape’ from ideologically correct socialist realism, but was also a desir-
able object of cultural consumption and a marker of the reader’s highly-
educated, cultured status. Among the educated youth especially, foreign
literature represented the idealised world culture of which they wished
to be a part, and was treated as high culture rather than entertainment.3
Translation also occupied an important place in Russian culture in
terms of its significant influence on the development of Russian literary
culture.4 The publication of translated works of Western authors was
closely linked to the broader intercultural relationship between the Soviet
Union and the West, ‘a particularly twentieth-c entury cross- cultural
encounter, in which the insertion of ideological as well as cultural and