Title of the article:

RUSSIAN WRITERS IN THE CZECH ENVIRONMENT DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE 1920S: PERIODICALS OF THE LEFT POLITICAL WING (NEWSPAPER “RUDE PRAVO”)

Author(s):

Anna V. Amelina

Information about the author/authors

Anna V. Amelina — Junior Researcher, Institute of Slavic Studies of Russian Academy of Sciences, Leninsky Ave., 32a, 119334 Moscow, Russia. ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2700-1076 E-mail: Anna.v.amelina@mail.ru

Section

Philological sciences

Year

2021

Volume

Vol. 59

Pages

pp. 199–212

Received

September 05, 2020

Date of publication

March 28, 2021

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37816/2073-9567-2021-59-199-212

Index UDK

82.091

Index BBK

83(4Чех)

Abstract

The paper examines perceptions of Russian literature in the first half of the 1920s by a Czech literary criticism of the left-wing political orientation, namely by Rudé Právo, newspaper of the communist party of Czechoslovakia. On the one hand, at this time, the Russian classics are being rethought in terms of their usefulness for the purposes of proletarian movement, up to discrediting individual authors (for example, F. M. Dostoevsky) and adjusting ideas of other writers to the communist ideology (L. N. Tolstoy). On the other hand, much attention of the editors is paid to the modern literature of post-revolutionary Russia, whose representatives are evaluated and selected for translation and review, provided they accept and praise the revolution (first of all, this is the poem The Twelve by A. A. Blok, poetry by V. V. Mayakovsky, prose by M. Gorky and V. G. Korolenko), whereas their work is assessed one-sidedly, exclusively in the ideological aspect. The first attempts of writing generalizing materials on the contemporary literary process (for example, Peasant revolutionary poetry by I. Weil) are being made. In general, Russian literature is viewed from an ideological standpoint, only with varying degrees of categoricality by individual critics. As the author reveals it was of great importance for the shaping of the ideological position and cultural program of the Czech communists, and compared with other literatures, its role is identified as leading.

Keywords

Czech literary criticism, Russian-Czech literary connections, history of Czech literature, Czech periodicals.

References

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