Soviet Gothic

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Muireann Maguire (University of Exeter)

Ed. by Neil Cornwell, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 2.2.2.00: Post-1917 Writing and Culture in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, 1917-present.
Vol. editors: Neil Cornwell (University of Bristol), Roman Koropeckyj (University of California, Los Angeles), Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)

Domains

Literature Topic

Dates

Date of occurrence 1917-10-1941

Places

Russia (Location)

Resources

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“Soviet Gothic” is a paradoxical literary concept: how could any aesthetic system as morbid and backwards-looking as the Gothic mesh with the dynamic, progressive and rationalist society of Soviet Russia? Nonetheless, Gothic themes were widely disseminated within early Soviet literature. In Soviet Russia, Gothic had many uses: as a vehicle for propaganda (Maxim Gorky’s classic 1907 novel

Mat’

[

Mother

]

depicts judges as bloodthirsty vampires), as a response to societal trauma (the forerunner of French Gothic fiction, the

roman noir

, was coeval with the French Revolution), and as a space for the exploration of cultural anxieties (Mikhail Bulgakov’s 1925 novel

Sobach’e serdtse

[

Heart of a Dog

]

parodies Russia’s then-topical obsessions with rejuvenation and eugenics). The Gothic…

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2008 words

Citation: Maguire, Muireann. "Soviet Gothic". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 March 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=16294, accessed 19 April 2024.]

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