Seminar Leader:
Kevin Platt

Preface:

Within a system that promotes conformity, literature can be a tool for resistance. Such was the case in the Soviet Union. Built by an anti-imperialist political movement on the ashes of the Russian Empire, the USSR came itself to resemble an empire. As part of its program of modernization, it called for the creation of socialist literature for the hundreds of languages, regions, and identities it embraced, from the Baltic states to the Caucasus, and from Ukraine, across Russia, to Central Asia and the far east. Yet literature was as much a means for anti-Soviet subversion as it was a reflection of official Soviet social life. In this course, we read broadly in the multi-national literature of the USSR and in more recent literature that reflects on the Soviet past, seeking to understand how literature both contributed to and resisted the Soviet project. Our reading included not only well-known figures of Russian literature, but also many non-Russian voices that have been overlooked as a result of the cultural politics of empire.