Socialist Realism in Central and Eastern European Literatures under Stalin

Evgeny Dobrenko is professor of Russian and Slavonic Studies, University of Sheffield, UK. He is the author, editor or co-editor of twenty books and numerous articles on Soviet and post-Soviet literature and culture.Natalia Jonsson-Skradol is a research associate at the University of Sheffield, UK. Her work focuses on unconventional approaches to discursive practices of repressive regimes – mostly Stalinism, but also German and Italian fascism.

'This volume’s transnational mosaic of contributions allows scholars to perceive a new way of thinking about Stalinist culture, as well as the culture it bequeathed in its wake.'— Pavel Khazanov, 'The Russian Review' Volume 77, Issue 4, October 2018 Pages 645-692

• Acknowledgements; Introduction, Evgeny Dobrenko and Natalia Jonsson- Skradol; Part 1. INSTITUTIONS; Chapter One How Socialist Realism Was Exported to Eastern European Countries and How They Got Rid of It, Hans Günther; Chapter Two Literary Monopolists and the Forging of the Post– World War II People’s Republic of Letters, Rossen Djagalov; Chapter Three Once Dr Faul Has Left: The Agony of Socialist Realism in Poland, 1955– 56, Evgeny Dobrenko; Chapter Four From Literature Censored by Poets to Literature Censored by the Party: Censorship in the Czech Literary Culture of 1945– 55, Pavel Jan á č ek; Chapter Five The Demise of ‘Socialist Realism for Export’ in 1947: VOKS Receives John Steinbeck and Robert Capa, Vladislav M. Zubok; Chapter Six The Soviet Factor and the Institutionalization of Bulgarian Literature after World War II, Tatiana V. Volokitina; Chapter Seven Cultural Renewal in Eastern Germany – Mission Impossible for Soviet Cultural Offi cers and German Anti- Fascists?, Anne Hartmann; Part 2. DYNAMICS; Chapter Eight Socialist Writers and Intellectuals in a Divided Nation: The Early GDR Experience, Helen Fehervary; Chapter Nine Stalinism’s Imperial Figure: Hero or Clerk of the Pax Sovietica ?, Benjamin Robinson; Chapter Ten From Avant- Garde to Socialist Realism: Continuities and Discontinuities in Hungarian and Romanian Literature, Imre J ó zsef Bal á zs; Chapter Eleven The Short Life of Socialist Realism in Croatian Literature, 1945– 55, Ivana Peru š ko; Chapter Twelve Literature in Socialist Yugoslavia: Constructing Collective Memory, Institutionalizing the Cultural Field, David Norris; Chapter Thirteen ‘Yesterday and Tomorrow’: The Forms of the Slovak Literature of Socialist Realism, 1945– 56, René Bílik; Chapter Fourteen Socialist or Realist: The Poetics of Politics in Sovietized Hungary, Melinda Kalmár; Part 3. DISCOURSES; Chapter Fifteen Introducing Socialist Realism in Hungary, 1945– 51: How Politics Made Aesthetics, Tam á s Scheibner; Chapter Sixteen When Writers Turn against Themselves: The Soviet Model and the Bulgarian Experience, 1946– 56, Plamen Doinov; Chapter Seventeen Big Brother’s Gravity: East European Literature in the Mirror of Soviet ‘Thick Journals’ in the Late 1940s, Evgeny Ponomarev; Chapter Eighteen The Coming One: Prolegomena to the Positive Hero of Czech Socialist Realism as a Transforming and Transformed Subject Vít Schmarc; Chapter Nineteen Will Freedom Sing as Beautifully as Captives Sang about It? Reshaping the Croatian Canon, 1945– 55, Nenad Ivić; Chapter Twenty The Salon in the Camp: Friendship Societies and the Literary Public Sphere in the SBZ and Early GDR, Natalia Jonsson- Skradol; Conclusion, Evgeny Dobrenko and Natalia Jonsson- Skradol; List of Contributors; Index.