The discussion of Soviet literature, woven with history, ideology, and human experience, was the focus of a new lecture delivered by Irina Shevelenko on September 5. The faculty director of the Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia (CREECA) and professor of Russian, Shevelenko offered a deep dive into the world of writing in post-Stalin Russia.
The event, the first event of the Fall 2024 CREECA Lecture Series, attracted an audience of over 40 attendees.
Shevelenko’s talk provided an insight into her current book-length project that examines the artistic and intellectual tendencies that shaped the understanding of the “age of extremes,” as Eric Hobsbawm called the twentieth century, during the late Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The book will explore the narrative forms, techniques, and overall representational strategies authors used to depict the struggles of individuals and society grappling with the consequences of failed political modernization and social disruption.
One of the case studies presented in the lecture was the unpublished poem “The Sated Lion” by Yuri Trifonov that Shevelenko discovered in his archive. This playful poem focuses on an encounter with a policeman and the strategies used by a Soviet citizen to come away unscathed from this encounter with a representative of the state.
An opposite example is found in a landmark novel from the 1970s, Pushkin House by Andrei Bitov, where the central character’s awareness of an inextinguishable fear before a representative of the state, also a policeman, allows the author to highlight the state of defeat in which the Soviet society celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the October revolution of 1917.
“It’s interesting [to see] the different narratives that have come out of these ‘encounters’ and what these policemen represent, and why some characters fear and others do not,” said Shevelenko.
When asked about a key takeaway from her lecture, Shevelenko explained that she hoped to demonstrate how scholars can approach and interpret texts, some complex and others lacking any history of reception, like the unpublished poem.
The lecture provided a valuable contribution to the ongoing conversation about an intriguing and multifaceted period in late Soviet history.
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Story by Kayla Daum