Introduction: Regionalism in Soviet Literature: Bilingualism and Literary Translation

Abstract

The present issue of Soviet Studies in Literature initiates a second occasional series planned for the journal under the general heading "Regionalism in Soviet Literature." Traditionally, Russian culture has been centered in the two cities of European Russia, Moscow and Leningrad. Yet there is a rich cultural life continuing elsewhere in the country which both feeds the intellectual and artistic currents of the center and carries on in its own right. Since long before the revolution of 1917, moreover, the vast territory of the Soviet Union has comprised many different cultures. According to present data, perhaps half the Soviet population is made up of non-Russian peoples. This new series, then, will seek to acquaint readers from time to time with what is taking place in contemporary Soviet literature outside of Moscow and Leningrad or, viewed from the opposite perspective, with the outlying influences which eventually join the broad stream we know as Soviet Russian literature. Forthcoming issues of the j...