Literary Pax
Sovietica
Late Stalinism
in Eastern Literatures
International Conference
University of Sheffield, UK
May 16-18, 2014
The relationship between Literature and ideology
in the communist Eastern Bloc after WWII represents a very important field of
research that can contribute significantly to a wider understanding of the foundations
of the new political and social order in post-World War II Eastern Europe. Although
there have been comparative studies of the Cold War period by scholars,
historians and literary critics, studies that were encouraged by the changes
that occurred in the 1990s, we are still
lacking in in-depth comparative study related to the process of the
institutionalization of literature and socialist realism in Eastern European countries.
Therefore, 23 years after the collapse of the communist regimes in Europe there
are still many issues concerning the relationship between literature and politics,
between literature and state ideology issues which need to be deeply investigated
by scholars whose academic interest is the East and South-East European
Studies.
The establishment of the communist regime
and the establishment of the method of Socialist Realism during the first post-War
decade in the Eastern Bloc were the main focus of Literary Pax Sovietica: Late Stalinism and East European Literatures,
an international conference organized by the Department of Slavonic Studies at
the University of Sheffield on May 16-18, 2014. This conference brought
together scholars from Europe and the USA whose field of expertise is
literature and history of Eastern Europe and the national cultures of these
countries during the communist regime.
Professors Evgeny Dobrenko and Natalia
Skradol were the organizers of this noteworthy and insightful academic event.
This conference was successful not only in accomplishing its goals but also in
presenting an example of how can we tackle issues related to literature and
communism in Eastern Europe in the present ever-changing context.
The introduction to the conference in day
1 was delivered by Neil Bermel and Evgeny Dobrenko from the University of
Sheffield. The conference was organized in six panels. The first panel focused
on the concept and application of soft power, brutal force and the significance
of words. Scholars from the University of Texas, Arlington - Dr. Patryk
Babiracki, from the University of Sheffield - Dr. Natalia Skradol, from the University
of Zagreb - Ivana Peruško and
from the New University of Bulgaria – Plamen
Doinov respectively gave the following presentations: “Soft power and
Eastern Europe 1945-1956; “Socialist realism in the Soviet zone: concept and
practice”; “Croatian ‘No’ to socialist realism: From Miroslav Krleža's
‘Dialectical Antibarbarus’ to ‘On Cultural Freedom’”; “Writers’ self-criticism: The Soviet model and the Bulgarian experience,
1946–1962”.
The second
panel focussed on World Literature in the Eastern Bloc. Professor Katerina Clark
(Yale University, USA) presented on ‘World Literature’: Standard Bearer of
Soviet Culture in the 1930s and Casualty in the 1940s and cosmopolitanism. Vladislav Zubok from London School of Economics, UK
presented on VOKS - Topic
TBC.
Rossen Djagalov from Koç University
in Turkey presented a paper whose focus was Literary Polpredy and the Constitution of ‘The
Literature of People’s Democracies’. This session closed with Tatiana
Volokitina, from the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of
Sciences in Russia, who offered in her presentation the results of the
research that she had conducted in the Russian archives about Writers and Political
Regimes in Eastern Europe.
The first
day of the conference ended with the keynote speaker Galin Tihanov from Queen Mary University of London
in UK who presented “The Post-Romantic Syndrome: Intellectual Adventures in
Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe, 1917-1989”.
The third panel of the conference took place during day 2 and its main topic
was: The Three C’s: Criticism, Censorship and
Celebrations. This panel offered a
wide perspective on the literatures in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and East
Germany. Pavel
Janáćek (Academy
of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Institute
of Czech Literature,
The Czech Republic) presented the paper:
“From Literature Censored by Poets to Literature Censored by the Party:
Evolution of the Stalinist Censorial System within the Czech Literary Culture
of 1945-1955”. Tomáš Glanc (Humboldt
University of Berlin, Germany) spoke on “Two Kinds of Czechoslovakian Mayakovsky.
Death Celebration, 1950”.
Imre
József Balázs from Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania
presented a paper on the Impact of the Mihai Eminescu school
of literature and literary criticism on the literatures of Romania, 1950-1955.
The last speaker of the session was Tamás
Scheibner from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary who presented the paper: “Competing
Sovietisations: Book publishing and censorship in post-WWII Hungary”.
The topic of the fourth panel was: “Formative
Divisions”.
The first speaker
in this session was Benjamin Robinson (Indiana University, USA) whose paper was
“Representing Opportunity: Between Behaviour and Leadership in the Early GDR”.
Following
this presentation and elaborating further on East Germany’s context were two
papers: the one presented by Helen Fehervary (Ohio State University, USA), “Competing
Visions: East German Writers and Intellectuals' Efforts to Create a Socialist
Culture under Soviet/GDR Governance and in the Cold War Context of a Divided
Nation” and the paper presented by Anne Hartmann from Ruhr-Universität Bochum
in Germany: “The Cultural Renewal in
Eastern Germany: Mission Impossible for Soviet Cultural Officers and German
Antifascists?”
The last
speaker of the session was Carl Tighe from the University of Derby, UK who presented the paper: “Number Crunching the Engineers of Human Souls:
Polish Writers in Figures.”
The fifth panel which concluded the
second day of the conference focused on another important issue of the
Literatures in the Eastern Bloc: Establishing the Literary
Establishment. The scholars presenting
in this panel where Bavjola
Shatro (Aleksandër Moisiu University, Albania)
who presented on Albanian Literature during the Establishment of the Communist
Regime: State, Ideology, Literary Tradition and the New Literature.
Melinda Kalmár – independent
Researcher from Hungary – presented the paper: “Literature and Politics in
Hungary, 1945-1956.”
Zoran Milutinović (University
College London, UK) presented a paper which focused on Socialist Realism in
Yugoslavia, 1944-1952. This panel was concluded by Katarzyna Śliwińska’s paper (Adam
Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland): “The Institutionalization of a Doctrine: Socialist Realism in Poland.”
The sixth
panel of the conference, which was also the last session, took place during the
third day of the conference and focussed on the topic Canons
after cannons. The contributions of the scholars who presented in
this session are the following:
Alexander Kiossev from
Sofia University, Bulgaria, whose paper focused on Stalinism and the Canon, The
Bulgarian Case;
Andrada Fătu-Tutoveanu from Babeș-Bolyai
University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania,
presented the paper: “Controlling Culture, Redesigning the Canon: The Post-War
‘Colonisation’ of the Romanian Literature”.
Wojciech Tomasik (Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland) who spoke on Socialist Literatures in the Polish
Canon, 1945-1955; and Nenad
Ivić (University of Zagreb, Croatia) whose paper was entitled:
“Will Freedom Sing as Beautifully as Captives Sang about It?”: Reshaping the
Croatian Canon, 1945-1955.
After the final
session of the conference an iconic movie of the Socialist realist cinema - a
blockbuster of the communist propaganda at the time: Conspiracy of Doomed (1950)
by Mikhail Kalatozov was screened. The film was preceded by an introduction delivered
by professor Evgeny Dobrenko and was followed by discussion and conclusions.
Besides the academic opportunities, the Literary Pax Sovietica conference also enabled the participants to
socialize during the meals and the activities that took place during the
conference. The participants were also able to visit the remarkable city of
Sheffield and the beautiful premises of the University of Sheffield, a
university which is well-known for his outstanding academic performance and
also for its impressive architecture and history.
This invitation-only conference offered the participants an exceptional
opportunity to hear the valuable contributions of scholars from several former
communist countries in Europe and from the USA and to participate in very fruitful
discussions. It also outlined a feasible and useful path for future discussion
in a field of studies, which is open to further investigation and research and
whose implications are constantly present in European academy and society.
Bavjola Shatro
