On the role of translated literature in constructing the “new Soviet person”: Anglophone fiction in Soviet Latvia of the 1940s

Abstract

In Latvia, the Soviet regime played a crucial role in the transformation of people’s values. Latvians had to be moulded into “New Soviet People” educated, hardworking, collectivistic, patriotic, loyal to the Communist Party and superior to any other human in the world. A “New Soviet Person” had to be ready to oppose all the threats of capitalism and eventually conquer the world. The research aim is to examine the ways Soviet officials tended to employ literature from ideologically opposite countries to implant ‘appropriate’ socialist values into society. On the example of British and American fiction presented in the public space of Latvia in the 1940s, the process of constructing a “Soviet identity” is considered. Soviet Latvia periodicals of the 1940s were used as a main data-collecting instrument revealing policies and practices of society moral education carried out by the regime ideologists.