Authors

Elizaveta Dvortsova¹;  ¹ University of Southern California, United States

Discussion

This paper examines the critical discussions of Soviet literature that appeared in major literary journals of the 1960s – Novyi mir ("New World") and Oktiabr’ ("October"). In the era of The Thaw, when the State embarked on a course of de-Stalinization, a new agenda was conducted through art, on the one hand (for example, so-called “camp literature”), and through critical polemics, on the other. The essence of the 1960s was formulated by endeavors of those who tried to break with the recent past and those who wanted to re-establish the old order. That discord had a direct reflection in the journal discussions of the time. The process of disassociation with Stalinism was never finished, yet the alleged polemics with the past needed some solid representation that the mass press has successfully provided.

Through case studies of literary discussions, I demonstrate how the journal debates could imitate polemics while imposing a certain way of cultural and political thinking. In the 1960s, when the political course aimed to imitate a discussion and polemical perception of the past, the disputes in the officially published press (i.e. periodicals that were state-owned, state-censored, and state-governed) supported that illusion of dialogue. Ultimately, however, the journal polemics were imitative too. On the surface it looked like a fierce struggle between two carriers of polar ideas about art (Novyi mir and Oktiabr’), but at its core, it was barely a discussion since the entire polemical momentum was gained courtesy of the State that still had control levers in the form of censorship and various Party organizations.