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

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.

Samantha Sherry is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the department of Medieval and Modern Languages, the University of Oxford.