Literary Translation and Soviet Cultural Politics in the 1930s: The Role of the Journal Internacionalʼnaja literatura

Until the late 1930s, the import, translation and dissemination of foreign literature in the Soviet Union was surprisingly free. Archival documents demonstrate that individual translators and successive editors of the journal Internatsionalʼnaia literatura (International Literature) played a key role in selecting foreign literary works for translation and publication. Viewed in part as an instrument of foreign policy, Internatsionalʼnaia literatura operated far more independently than any other literary periodical of its day. Through careful manoeuvring and extensive correspondence with foreign writers and the Party elite, the editors of Internatsionalʼnaia literatura were able to hold off the pressures of centralisation and cultural isolationism for significantly longer than was possible in relation to domestic literature.