Window to the West: From the Collection of Readers' Letters to the Journal Internatsional'naia literatura

Abstract

Internatsional'naia literatura was the only thick journal during the Stalin period that was entirely devoted to translated literature and it was also the main source that provided Soviet citizens with information about cultural life abroad. Not only pro-Soviet and proletarian foreign authors but also representatives of Western modernism were published in this unique journal. The readers' letters selected for the current publication were written to the editorial board of Internatsional'naia literatura between 1938 and 1940. Now, they are kept in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI) in Moscow. These archival documents demonstrate that readers' worldviews were more complex and diverse than was often presented in the official press at that time. The readers evaluate various aspects of the periodical's work and they also criticise cultural policies of the Party-state and the existing system of control over translated literature. These letters offer important insights into cultural life and, more broadly, everyday life on the eve of the Second World War; and they problematize our understanding of Stalinist cultural politics as both monolithic and isolated from the West. Most importantly, the letters demonstrate the appearance in the late 1930s of a category of readers whom we propose to define as 'creative readers'. These readers were ready to express openly opinions that were at odds with the official propaganda of the time. The publication of letters by such reader s is the first step toward a systematic study of this important category of Soviet citizens.