Conference Soviet Multinational Literature as an Imperial Practice 2024

TU Dresden, October 24 – 25, 2024

About the Conference

The conference is intended to examine key aspects of Soviet multinational literature as an imperial practice. Despite the common opinion that in the Soviet era there was nothing in the national cultures but oppression and Russification (which were undoubtedly present), we support the premise that in Soviet times the future nations underwent an important stage of cultural rebirth and discovery of their modern cultural identity. In each national case the process of cultural self-discovery proceeded in a different way, but it was this very imperial context in which the basic features of each contemporary nation were shaped: the language, national mythology and history, and a common national - often traumatic and tragic - experience. National literatures played a key role in formation of different Soviet identities.

The discussions to be launched at the conference will allow us to confront the common notions of Soviet multinational literature and culture as a monolithic phenomenon of the erstwhile empire’s dictatorship, devoid of contradictions and individual features. An understanding of the complexity of the origins, life, decay, and death of the Soviet imperial canon in its various national and regional guises can also explain much in the current dramatic collisions in the post-Soviet world.

We gather not only established and early career experts in various national literatures but also specialists with a broader expertise who will capably speak about national literatures as part of the Soviet literary “orchestra.” Following subjects are of particular interest for us: multinational Soviet literary history as an instrument of nation-building; hybrid nature of national canons: their genealogy from local folklore, mythology, historical realisms, and modernisms; hetero-chronical development of national Soviet canons (different historical dynamic 1930s-1980s); networks and cultural transfer within multinational Soviet literature.

Participation

The conference lasts from Thursday, the 24^th until Friday 25^th of October 2024. The events will take place in a hybrid format – in presence in Wienerstraße 48, room 016 and online on Zoom.

You can participate online in all events spontaneously by accessing the following Zoom-Link:

https://tu-dresden.zoom-x.de/j/69348541260?pwd=NbL73ks56kakQMi7iC5zhM5bWMF3BD.1

Meeting-ID: 693 4854 1260
Code: !cPprA3K

Program

October 24

10:00	Klavdia Smola, Evgeny Dobrenko. Opening of the Conference
Session INSTITUTIONAL FRAMES
10:30	Yuliya Kozitskaya (Nazarbayev University, Astana) Kazakh Literature for Soviet Readers: Kazakh Authors on the Pages of Moscow-Based Journals
11:00	Alla Burtseva (Independent Researcher) – Online “We Came not out of Simple Curiosity”: Writers’ Brigades and Almanac Project in 1930s Turkmenistan
11:30	Dmitry Tsyganov (Independent Researcher) – Online Сталинская премия по литературе и производство локальных художественных идентичностей в советских республиках
12:00 –14:00	Lunch Break
Session CONCEPTUAL FRAMES
14:00	Evgeny Dobrenko (University of Venice) Tropology of Brotherhood: Poetics of Stalinist Imperial Imagination and Homogenization of Soviet Space
14:30	Ulyana Veryna (University of Oldenburg) The Ghost of Revival: Belarusian Literature on the Way to “Multinational Soviet Literature”
15:00	Ilya Kukulin (Stanford University) Orientalism as Modernism: Oriental Stylization in Soviet Culture
18:00	Conference Dinner

October 25

Session (MULTI)NATIONAL CANON(S)
10:00	Galin Tihanov (Queen Mary University of London) Did the Renaissance Begin in the Caucasus? or How to Think Literary History Globally
10:30	Klavdia Smola (University of Dresden) Becoming Global between “East” and “West”: Multinational Soviet Literature During Perestroika and in the 1990s
11:00	Erin Hutchinson (University of Colorado at Boulder) What We Talk About When We Talk about Stalin: De-Stalinization in the Context of Multinational Soviet Literature
11:30 –12:00	Coffee Break
Session HISTORIES AND TRADITIONS
12:00	Dalia Satkauskytė (Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, Vilnius) The Lithuanian Version of Socialist Realism: An Imposed Doctrine and Incorporated Tradition
12:30	Alessandro Achilli (University of Cagliari) Between Modernism and Sovietization: Mykola Bazhan and Pavlo Tychyna between the 1920s and the 1930s
13:00	Tatsiana Astrouskaya (Herder Institute, Marburg) From the National to the Socialist and Back Again? The All-Union Triumph of Belarusian War Prose
13:30 –14:00	Coffee Break
14:00 –14:30	Concluding Discussion
14:30	Departure

Organisation

The event is organized by the Department of Slavic Literatures of TU Dresden (Prof. Klavdia Smola) in cooperation with the Department of Linguistics and Comparative of Ca' Foscari University of Venice (Prof. Evgeny Dobrenko).

The working language will be English. Travel and accommodation costs can be covered by TU Dresden.