Mass Character and “Massovization” in the Early Soviet Literary Process

Abstract

Theorizing the concept of Soviet literature is associated with the understanding that in the 1920s the literary process is undergoing massive changes. The mass writer undergoes ideological molding. The “order for inspiration” after 1926 does not come from the financial market, but from the authorities. But regardless of the instance that actualized the order, the fusion of literature with power gives rise to “paraliterature,” which typologically equates the “tabloid” generated by financial mechanisms with mass custom-made thematic literature. An appeal to the motives of the behavior of participants in the early Soviet literary process, the study of which is provided by the archives of proletarian writers’ unions, reveals the possibility of a sociological and literary interpretation in the concept of a Soviet writer. In the sociological perspective, the Soviet writer belongs to the market of ideological values, and the referential content of this concept, proposed by E.A. Dobrenko and M.O. Chudakova — “mass graphomania” or subordination to the doctrine of socialist realism — corresponds to the social practice of the 1920s–1930s. In the literary perspective, the writer appears as the author, “a structure acting in the space of the work.” The immanent perspective liberates the Soviet writer from the status of “Sovietness” and makes it possible to attribute his works to the achievements of world literature.