Between ideology and literature: Translation in the USSR during the Brezhnev period

Abstract

The USSR's de-Stalinization and liberalization under Khrushchev opened up the country to the West and led to a boom in the translation of foreign and especially Western literature. After the Thaw, however, Soviet society is generally seen to have moved into a period of stagnation, characterized by a cooling in its enthusiasm for America and the West more generally. This article will examine the fate of translated literature in the less congenial environment of the Brezhnev years, looking in particular at translations in the journal Novyi mir in 1965–1981. It will show that, although there were changes in the profile of the translations published during the period, overall, translation cannot be said to have undergone stagnation. It asks how translation was used by different agents: the Party, editors, and translators. It will argue that translation continued to be seen by the Party as symbolic of the ‘friendship of the peoples’, but was used by editors and translators to publish artistically diverse and challenging works. It will show how various strategies were employed by the journal's editors and translators to present texts in such a way as to get them past the censor.

Keywords:

• censorship
• ideology
• Brezhnev stagnation
• translation in the USSR
• history of translation
• Soviet literature
• Novyi mir

Notes on contributor

Emily Lygo is Senior Lecturer in Russian at the University of Exeter. She has published on twentieth-century Russian poetry, the history of translation in Russia, and the history of Anglo-Soviet cultural relations.