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Stalin’s Ghosts

Gothic Themes in Early Soviet Literature

by Muireann Maguire (Author)
©2023 Monographs XII, 332 Pages

Summary

Stalin’s Ghosts examines the impact of the Gothic-fantastic on Russian literature in the period 1920-1940. It shows how early Soviet-era authors, from well-known names including Fedor Gladkov, Mikhail Bulgakov, Andrei Platonov and Evgenii Zamiatin, to niche figures such as Sigizmund Krzhizhanovskii and Aleksandr Beliaev, exploited traditional archetypes of this genre: the haunted castle, the deformed body, vampires, villains, madness and unnatural death. Complementing recent studies of Soviet culture by Eric Naiman and Lilya Kaganovsky, this book argues that Gothic-fantastic tropes functioned variously as a response to the traumas produced by revolution and civil war, as a vehicle for propaganda, and as a subtle mode of unwriting the cultural monolith of Socialist Realism.

Details

Pages
XII, 332
Publication Year
2023
ISBN (PDF)
9781803742212
ISBN (ePUB)
9781803742229
ISBN (Softcover)
9781803742205
DOI
10.3726/b20895
Language
English
Publication date
2023 (May)
Published
Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, New York, Wien, 2023. XII, 332 pp.

Biographical notes

Muireann Maguire (Author)

Muireann Maguire is Career Development Fellow in Russian Literature and Culture at Wadham College, Oxford. Her research interests include Gothic aspects of Soviet literature, Russian émigré prose, and the representation of science and scientists in Russian literary and cinematic culture since 1850. Red Spectres, her translated selection of twentieth-century Russian Gothic tales, was published in 2012.

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Title: Stalin’s Ghosts