The 'Heroic Life' of a Friend of Stalinism: Romain Rolland and Soviet Culture

Abstract

After considering existing biographical, sociological, and political explanations for Western intellectual Sovietophilia in the 1930s, this article develops what is called a transnational or transsystemic explanatory framework. It does so through an in-depth case study of Romain Rolland, perhaps the most distinguished interwar European intellectual to become an uncritical apologist for Stalinism. The article analyses points of direct contact between the French writer and the Soviet system, in particular his 1935 Soviet visit and audience with Stalin. It also considers the role of intermediaries between Rolland and the Soviets, including Rolland's longtime correspondent Maksim Gor'kii, the Old Bolshevik cultural diplomat Aleksandr Arosev, and Rolland's Russian wife Mariia Kudasheva. Finally, the article examines the cultural and intellectual underpinnings of Rolland's affinity for the USSR, including his participation in a pan-European, anti-fascist culture; it juxtaposes this to Soviet views of Rolland, including the mass celebration of Rolland within the emergent Stalinist culture.