Soviet literature

The monthly magazine Soviet literature was a magazine of the Soviet Writers' Union , which appeared from 1946 to 1991 in multiple languages. ( ISSN  0202-1889 )

General characterization

The magazine appeared in various languages ​​and was produced in Moscow. The last editor-in-chief (from 1989 to 1991) was the Russian writer Alexander Prochanov . The German version appeared from 1946 to 1991, as did the English edition Soviet Literature ( ISSN  0202-1870 ) and the French Lettres Sovietiques ( ISSN  0202-1862 ). Later there were also editions in Polish, Slovak, Spanish, Czech and Hungarian.

The magazine primarily endeavored to convey contemporary Soviet literature, but occasionally classics by Russian or other literatures based on the territory of the Soviet Union were also presented.

• 

  Front cover of an edition from 1966

• 

  Front page of an edition from 1974 (Stasis Krasauskas)

• 

  Front cover of an issue for children from 1987 (Iwan Bilibin)

content

The magazine was an official organ of the Soviet Writers' Union and thus also had a propaganda mandate in the broadest sense: the non-Russian-speaking world was to be presented with the diversity and progressiveness of Soviet literature. Although the magazine for all languages ​​was produced centrally in Moscow , each language had its own editorial team and its own editor-in-chief. Therefore the content of the respective booklet was not identical. In any case, the focus was on modern literature, which saw itself as committed to socialist realism . The translations into German were often done by Russian Germans . Translations from the non-Russian literatures of the Soviet Union were also carried out via Russian, which functioned as the lingua franca of the Soviet Union. However, the quality of these indirect translations was sometimes not very high.

Main topics

Occasionally, entire issues were devoted to a particular national literature or trend, for example, issues 8/1972 and 1/1989 were entirely reserved for Estonian literature. Authors who later became famous in Germany also sometimes made their German-language debut in “Soviet literature”, for example Jaan Kross , of whom a story appeared in German in issue 8/1971 (pp. 80-108), or Viivi Luik , whose first poem translated into German appeared in issue 10/1968.

effect

Soviet literature was not only received in the GDR, the magazine also attracted attention in West Germany. A random sample from 2011 showed that at least some volumes of the journal are available in over 60 German academic libraries.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cornelius Hasselblatt : Estonian literature in German translation. A reception story from the 19th to the 21st century. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2011. pp. 213-219.
2. ↑ Cornelius Hasselblatt : Estonian literature in German translation. A reception story from the 19th to the 21st century. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2011. p. 213.