Treats publication and critical reception of U.S. writing, especially fiction, in Russia in the first four decades of the Soviet regime, analyzing it in terms of aesthetic and political theory. Originally published in 1962. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
The contributors in this interdisciplinary collection address the problem of interconnection between the study of the “Other,” either Russian or American, and the shaping of national identities in the two countries at different stages of US–Russian relations. The focus of research interests were typically determined by the political and social debates in scholars’ native countries. In this book, leading Russian and American scholars analyze the problems arising from these intersections of academic, political, and sociocultural contexts and the implicit biases they entail. The book is divided into two parts, the first being a historical overview of past configurations of the interrelationship between fields and agendas, and the second covering the role of institutionalized area studies in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.In both parts the role of the “human factor” in the study of mutual representations is elucidating.
This authors of this useful handbook, originally published in 1985, not only summarise Mark Twain scholarship, but also evaluate, in much detail, the various contributions. Each chapter includes a thorough annotated bibliography. This title also includes a comprehensive chronological table of the significant events in Mark Twain’s Life, including the publication dates of his works. This title will be of interest to students of American Literature.
A biography of the Jewish American, left-wing author of Spartacus that explores his identity, his work, and his politics. Howard Fast’s life, from a rough-and-tumble Jewish New York street kid to the rich and famous author of close to one hundred books, rivals the Horatio Alger myth. Author of bestsellers such as Citizen Tom Paine, Freedom Road, My Glorious Brothers, and Spartacus, Fast joined the American Communist Party in 1943 and remained a loyal member until 1957, despite being imprisoned for contempt of Congress. Gerald Sorin illuminates the connections among Fast’s Jewishness, his writings, and his left-wing politics and explains Fast’s attraction to the Party and the reasons he stayed in it as long as he did. Recounting the story of his private and public life with its adventure and risk, love and pain, struggle, failure, and success, Sorin also addresses questions such as the relationship between modern Jewish identity and radical movements, the consequences of political myopia, and the complex interaction of art, popular culture, and politics in twentieth-century America. “A notable study of a thorny protagonist whose life has much to reveal about the times in which he lived and about the interplay of political belief, personal identity, art, and ambition.” —Publishers Weekly “Sorin . . . has written a heavily researched critical biography of Fast. . . . The volume’s strength is its explication and analysis of the complex social and political context of Fast’s activism and creative work. . . . Sorin’s lengthy critique of Fast’s adherence to Communism long after most American writers and intellectuals had abandoned the party, and his shameful public silence on Stalin’s crimes and Soviet anti-Semitism, are of significant import. . . . Recommended.” —Choice “An intriguing biography, not least for its examination of how Fast interwove his political activism, his Jewishness and his art during the heyday of McCarthyism. Recommended.” —Recorder (Melbourne)
The Russian Revolution of 1917 was not just a world-historical event in its own right, but also struck powerful blows against racism and imperialism, and so inspired many black radicals internationally. This edited collection explores the implications of the creation of the Soviet Union and the Communist International for black and colonial liberation struggles across the African diaspora. It examines the critical intellectual influence of Marxism and Bolshevism on the current of revolutionary ‘black internationalism’ and analyses how ‘Red October’ was viewed within the contested articulations of different struggles against racism and colonialism. Challenging European-centred understandings of the Russian Revolution and the global left, The Red and the Black offers new insights on the relations between Communism, various lefts and anti-colonialisms across the Black Atlantic – including Garveyism and various other strands of Pan-Africanism. The volume makes a major and original intellectual contribution by making the relations between the Russian Revolution and the Black Atlantic central to debates on questions relating to racism, resistance and social change.
Before the Nazis came to power in Germany, Soviet officials had already labeled the United States the most racist country in the world. Photographs, children’s stories, films, newspaper articles, political education campaigns, and court proceedings exposed the hypocrisy of America’s racial democracy. In contrast the Soviets represented the USSR itself as a superior society where racism was absent and identified African Americans as valued allies in resisting an imminent imperialist war against the first workers’ state. Meredith L. Roman’s Opposing Jim Crow examines the period between 1928 and 1937, when the promotion of antiracism by party and trade union officials in Moscow became a priority. Although Soviet leaders stood to gain considerable propagandistic value at home and abroad by drawing attention to U.S. racism, their actions simultaneously directed attention to the routine violation of human rights that African Americans suffered as citizens of the United States. Soviet policy also challenged the prevailing white supremacist notion that blacks were biologically inferior and thus unworthy of equality with whites. African Americans of various political and socioeconomic backgrounds became indispensable contributors to the Soviet antiracism campaign and helped officials in Moscow challenge the United States’ claim to be the world’s beacon of democracy and freedom.
This volume narrows a huge gap in regard to Steinbeck translations in Eastern Europe, here considered in terms of the political division between Western Europe and the Soviet-dominated East. As the only book of its kind, and although intended for both literature scholars and the broader arts community, it makes an important contribution to Steinbeck and American literature studies, and is useful for scholars of the languages discussed here. Although Steinbeck is regarded as an American writer of high repute, his appeal and influence extend far beyond the borders of North America. As documented here, he was particularly popular in Eastern Europe, where he inadvertently served political purposes. Evaluated through an ideological lens, the sole value of his works was seen to reside in their utility to oppressive political regimes. Even works that clearly showed Steinbeck venturing into new topics and forms could not escape an ideological burden, whereas several others that lacked social necessity and documentary integrity were unjustifiably marginalised or consigned to oblivion. As this study also shows, only recently, following the fall of totalitarian rule, have Steinbeck’s works started to be approached from the various angles of contemporary criticism. The acknowledgement that there is much more to recommend in his books than that which was praised by those who, blinded by their commitment or because of imposed limitations on expectations, showed no appreciation for the variety and subtlety of Steinbeck’s writing, explains the recent renaissance of interest in the whole of Steinbeck’s oeuvre. Indeed, viewed without preconceived ideas and accepted for what they are, it is impossible not to respond to Steinbeck’s exploration of issues of freedom, individual choice, and relationships, and not to notice that he was much more than merely a proletarian writer.
