Nikolay Myaskovsky: A Composer and His Times by Patrick Zuk (review)

Abstract

literary system possessed and reproduced a distinct behavioural logic. As Any contends, such behaviour proved morally and psychologically corrosive, both for the individuals concerned and for the organization that they helped to run. The union, like its leadership, was weakened by its own contradictions, even though it survived to the end of the Soviet era. The extraordinary richness of the sources at the heart of this institutional and biographical narrative can make it a rather dense and indigestible read at times. The author does not always clearly guide the reader through the thickets of writers’ and bureaucrats’ doctrinal and inter-personal squabbles, and her most insightful observations are sometimes buried amongst lengthy source description and citation. Moreover, the meticulous reconstruction of Stalinist literary politics does not always sit comfortably with the psychoanalyticallyinflected analysis of writers’ ‘souls’ and ‘conscience’ that comes to the fore in the second half of the book, in particular. Overall, though, this is a ground-breaking and eye-opening book that will be essential reading for anyone interested in Soviet literature, especially of the Stalin era. It fundamentally recasts the narrative of the emergence of Soviet literature and literary institutions, and it provides the first detailed portraits of many of its leading figures, who had previously been ignored, or dismissed as party bureaucrats without considering how literary-political relationships were themselves in flux in this period. However, this somewhat demanding analysis is likely to prove most accessible and useful to researchers already well-versed in the literary history of the era, rather than to undergraduates or the general reader.