MacFadyen focuses on Brodsky's poetic beginnings. Revising the typical, simplistic representation of the young Brodsky and his peers in Western criticism, he demonstrates that Brodsky and his acquaintances absorbed an amazingly wide range of texts, both old and new, and that they read contemporary American, French, German, and Polish literature. Through numerous interviews with Brodsky's contemporaries and vast archival research, MacFadyen offers a vital new slant on Brodsky's early verse, providing the first published translations of these poems and examining Brodsky's work in relation to a...

The author traces the careers of early singers such as Izabella Iur'eva, Tamara Tsereteli, and others who struggled to continue to perform as they fled the dangers of a Soviet society that had little patience for cafe-culture. MacFadyen follows their trail through Eastern Europe to Paris and London, then across to New York and San Francisco, and back into Russia through the smoky, emigre bars of colourful Chinese towns. He pays particular attention to the notion of "mass" songs inside the Soviet Union and explores the relationship of official and public approval. By looking at how these...

Political positions come and go but talking animals, evil witches, and mythical princesses endure. David MacFadyen argues that Soviet socialist animation between 1936 and 1999 was a fundamentally emotional, not propagandistic, enterprise that requires a reconsideration of Soviet art in general. Of particular interest are the relationships between "realist" Russian animation and USSR politics and the lasting success of Disney in the Soviet Union. MacFadyen further analyses Soviet animation through phenomenology, arguing that the latter is a viable alternative not only to dogmatic Marxism but...