The “Novy mir” magazine and the “turn” of Soviet literature

Abstract

The paper aims to determine the role of the “Novy Mir” magazine and its editor-in-chief A. T. Tvardovsky and some writers who adhered to liberalism in the conditions of the prevailing social culture of the cult of personality and the no-conflict theory in the early 20th century in the renewal of Soviet literature of the 1950s-1960s. The study is novel in that the author establishes the fact of the beginning of the “thaw” period in Soviet culture, which emerged when Tvardovsky ran the magazine in the light of the development of ideas about the conflict-free nature of Soviet literature. The paper indicates that the works describing noble heroism no longer resonated with the readers, there was a significant turn towards realistic literature. As the editor-in-chief of the “Novy Mir” magazine, Tvardovsky introduced readers to the concepts of literary authenticity, freedom and equality, which greatly stimulated the reform of Soviet literature. As a result, it has been revealed that the “Novy Mir” magazine not only influenced the development of the USSR literature of the 1950s-1960s, but also contributed to the formation of the “thaw” period in the Soviet literary process.