Discourses of Regulation and Resistance: Censoring Translation in the Stalin and Khrushchev Era Soviet Union

ISBN-13: 9780748698028 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 208 str.

Samantha Sherry

Opis

Despite tense and often hostile relations between the USSR and the West, Soviet readers were voracious consumers of foreign culture and literature as the West was both a model for emulation and a potential threat. Discourses of Regulation and Resistance explores this ambivalent and contradictory attitude to the West and employs in depth analysis of archive material to offer a comprehensive study of the censorship of translated literature in the Soviet Union.
Detailed case studies from two of the most important Soviet literary journals, examine how editors and the authorities mediated and manipulated the image of the West, tracing debates and interventions in the publication process. Drawing upon material from Soviet archives, it shows how editors and translators tried to negotiate between their own ideals and the demands of Soviet ideology, combining censorship and resistance in a complex interplay of practices.
As part of a new and growing body of work on translation as a cultural phenomenon, this book will make essential reading for students and scholars working in Translation Studies as well as cultural historians of Russia and the Soviet Union.

Spis treści

Acknowledgements; Note on Transliteration; Introduction; Theorising Censorship: Russian and Western approaches; Censorship modes and practices; Structure of the book; Part I: Context; Chapter 1: Translation and translators in the Soviet Union; The development of translation in Soviet culture; Soviet translation theory; The official image of translators; Translators as apolitical intellectuals; Chapter 2: The Soviet censorship system; Censorship and the control of foreign literature; The spetskhran; Glavlit’s interventions in the text; Publishers’ role in the control of foreign literature; Editorial censorship: the link between state and author; Translators as censors; Part II: Case Studies; Chapter 3: Censorship in the Stalin period: Internatsional’naia literatura; A fragile cosmopolitanism; The rhetoric of Soviet superiority; Political and ideological taboo; Fascism and anti-fascism; The war: a sudden reversal; Puritanical censorship; ‘Sovietising’ foreign culture; Chapter 4: Censorship in the Khrushchev Era: Inostrannaia literatura; Choosing texts: external interference and internal debates; The cold war; Puritanical censorship: euphemism and structural censorship; Trimming foreign texts; Chapter 5: Resisting Censorship; Aesopian translation; Working outside the system: samizdat translations; Resisting censorship: a complex blend of practices; Conclusion; Bibliography