RUS - Journal of Russian Literature and Culture
Universidade de São Paulo. Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Fátima Bianchi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Presentation: Dossier “Russian and Soviet Cinema: from the Empire to the Present Day”
Estamos às vésperas dos 130 anos da chegada do cinema à Rússia e do posterior desenvolvimento de uma das mais potentes e inovadoras linguagens cinematográficas em âmbito mundial, que constitui o legado incontornável dos cineastas russos e soviéticos. Apesar de muitos desses filmes circularem discretamente no Brasil desde meados do século XX, pouca atenção é dada ao estudo sistemático da História do Cinema Russo, cuja relevância para a compreensão da cultura russa e soviética é irrefutável. Por esse motivo, a composição deste dossiê busca estimular pesquisas mais aprofundadas entre nossos estudiosos. E, seguindo essa proposta, decidimos oferecer um breve panorama histórico para iniciar esta apresentação. Nosso intuito é contribuir para a reflexão sobre a cinematografia russa e soviética, marcada por uma relação complexa e contínua com a censura, que reflete tanto as convulsões políticas do país quanto a influência decisiva de seus governantes, que, via de regra, permanecem no poder por longos períodos.
Copyright (c) 2025 Erivoneide Barros, Neide Jallageas https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The absence of affective memory and the non-conversion of Goryanchikov in Dostoevsky’s Notes from the House of the Dead
This article analyzes the narrator Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov in Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from the House of the Dead, arguing that his inability to achieve spiritual redemption and union with the common people stems from a narrative construction centered on the sterility of affective memory. The analysis identifies three interconnected characteristics: the narrator's immateriality, as he observes the prison from a detached perspective, without embodying the physical experience; temporal stasis, which confines him to a cyclical and empty present, reflected in the fragmentary structure of the narrative; and, most crucially, the absence of pre-incarceration affective memories. Goryanchikov does not evoke positive recollections from his past and remains entirely silent about his crime, preventing any elaboration of guilt or remorse. This deficiency renders inner conversion impossible. The article contrasts this condition with the sketch "The Peasant Marey," in which Dostoevsky himself recounts how an affective memory from his childhood brought about a redemptive transformation in his perception of the convicts. The deliberate absence of this resource in Goryanchikov's characterization consolidates his tragedy: reason, divorced from affective memory, becomes an inner prison, condemning him to a sterile freedom and isolation.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ednilson Rodrigo Pedroso https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Narratives in Abyme in the Film Adaptations of The Master and Margarita
The novel The Master and Margarita, by the Soviet playwright Mikhail Bulgákov (1928–1940), went through processes of burning, rewriting and circulation via samizdat, until its complete publication in 1973. Since then, it has inspired several adaptations, notably two homonymous Russian productions by Yuri Kara (1994) and Mikhail Lockshin (2024). Constructed as a specular double, the work is structured through Narratives in Abyss (Mise en Abyme), encompassing Goethe’s Faust, the biblical narrative of Pilate and Yeshua, and the context of censorship in the USSR experienced by the author and his characters. As these layers intertwine, they dilute the boundaries between the real and the fantastic, reflecting on the human condition and the duality between good and evil. This study proposes to analyze how the aforementioned adaptations translate these embedded narratives in the construction of the fictional universe for the cinema. As a theoretical framework, we draw upon studies on mise en abyme by Gide, Dallenbach and Todorov, as well as to the reflections on adaptation and rewriting proposed by Lefevere and Catrysse.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lorena Lopes Silva https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The movie in front of its abyss: Eisenstein and the teaching of cinema
This article examines the tension between the creation of art and institutional education through Sergei Eisenstein's pedagogical practices at the VGIK. It explores the hypothesis that the filmmaker's intense teaching period coincided with a deepening of the reflection on creative process, resulting in increasingly complex works. The study demonstrates the viability of an educational model integrated within an aesthetic-political project, while highlighting the inherent challenges of translating the creative act into pedagogy.
Copyright (c) 2025 José Manuel Mouriño https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Dionysian Echoes in Rabelais and his World:the Implicit Dialogue between Nietzsche and Bakhtin
This article investigates the presence of Friedrich Nietzsche’s thought in Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World, despite the almost complete absence of explicit references to the German philosopher. We assume that, although silenced by the ideological context of Stalinism, Nietzschean influence is covertly manifested in Bakhtin’s conception of carnival. To this end, we examine four analytical axes: the Russian intellectual context of the early twentieth century, biographical elements of Bakhtin that favored the reception of Nietzsche, theoretical connections already suggested by Western interpreters, and finally, the internal reading of the work itself. The results indicate that central categories of Nietzschean thought—such as the Dionysian, the eternal return, and the critique of social hierarchies—were reworked by Bakhtin from the perspective of popular culture, taking on communal and collective features in contrast to Nietzsche’s aristocratic individualism. We conclude that the relation between the two thinkers should not be understood as mere thematic coincidence, but as an implicit and creative dialogue that broadens the understanding of Bakhtin’s carnival as a philosophical, aesthetic, and anthropological category.
Copyright (c) 2025 Francisco Benedito Leite, Paulo Roberto Pedrozo Rocha https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Possessions of writing: J. M. Coetzee's reinterpretation of Dostoevsky's fiction in The Master of Petersburg
This paper proposes a comparative analysis of the critical and fictional resonances between the work of Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky and the novel "The Master of Petersburg" by South African writer John Maxwell Coetzee. Through a comparative approach, the study sought to identify narrative connections between the aforementioned novel and the broader Dostoevskyan oeuvre regarding the positions assumed by the characters throughout the plot. Thus, the research highlighted that, based on the characters constructed by J. M. Coetzee in his novel, there is an articulation and appropriation of Dostoevskyan dialogism through the characters' statements, leading the plot to simulate a "possession" that occurs not through the denotative meaning of this word, but rather through its use as a metaphor in the process of fictional writing.
Copyright (c) 2025 Antonio Maurício Martins Neto https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
From text to painting on glass: the recreation of The Dream of a Ridiculous Man by Aleksandr Petrov
This study aims to analyze how Aleksandr Petrov’s animated film The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1992) promotes a recreation of Dostoevskian poetics by adapting Fyodor Dostoyevsk’s short story of the same name. Based on Linda Hutcheon’s theory of adaptation (2011), Jasmine Jacq’s studies of the novelist’s adaptations (2017; 2019), and interviews with the filmmaker, this study seeks to highlight how the technique of glass painting intensifies the sensory experience of the emotions experienced by the character “ridiculous man.” Thus, by symbolically recreating the original narrative and incorporating metaphorical, sound, and visual elements, Petrov’s animated film offers a renewed experience that dialogues with Dostoevsky’s work by reinterpreting its essence through a pictorial expressiveness that is simultaneously realistic and subjective, capable of translating the spiritual density and inner drama of Dostoevsky’s characters.
Copyright (c) 2025 Douglas de Sousa , Anderson Cantanhede https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
In Ivan the Terrible (Parts I and II), directed by Sergei Eisenstein (1943 and 1945), the figure of Saint Michael the Archangel – with his face set in a flaming sun—appears in the tsar’s reception hall, a design created by Eisenstein himself. Strikingly, it echoes the long-standing iconographic tradition of the same angel that has been depicted for centuries across Latin America. Likewise, the layout of the drawing on the ceiling and walls recalls graphic solutions explored by Mexican muralists, whom Eisenstein admired so deeply that he saw them as his artistic forebears. These affinities point to the complex kind of (international) nationalism that shaped the film’s conception. The (Latin) angel who at once threatened and empowered Ivan resists any simplistic reading of the film as mere Stalinist propaganda.
Copyright (c) 2025 Luiz Felipe Guimarães Soares https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
From Revolution to Cosmos: expressions of science fiction in the early decades of Soviet cinema
This article aims to present an understanding of the cultural promotion of the science fiction/fantasy genre in imperial Russian and Soviet society, and conduct a study of the two cinematographic works selected using Marc Ferro's method of analysis. The science fiction/fantasy literary genre in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union was popular in different forms and themes. In Soviet cinema, the genre began to be popularized through two productions: director Yakov Protazanov’s film Aelita, Queen of Mars (1924) and director Vasily Zhravlev’s Cosmic Journey (1936).
Copyright (c) 2025 Vinícius Braga Mendonça, Walter Günther Rodrigues Lippold https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
"Mentally organizing what has been seen": Dziga Vertov's diary of an expedition to Crimea, August 1925
In August of 1925, Dziga Vertov produced a handwritten report about a three-day visit to the Bakhchissaray district in Crimea. The analysis of this unpublished document, conserved in the “Notebooks and notepads” section of his fond in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI), allows us to glimpse at a rarely discussed stage of his creative process, defined by him as the “montage after an observation: mentally organizing what has been seen”. From his manuscript, the multiple interests at play during the making of A sixth of the world (1926) emerge – from the advertising of the commercial network managed by the Soviet State to the ethnographic study of the region – as well as the potential forms of cinematographic documentation considered by the filmmaker.
Copyright (c) 2025 Luis Felipe Gurgel Ribeiro Labaki https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The multifaceted Aleksandr Nevsky: from historical journey to Soviet reconstruction
Sergei Eisenstein’s 1938 film Alexander Nevsky sought to rehabilitate and reintroduce the thirteenth‑century saint and prince as a national hero, situating him within the patriotic discourses cultivated in the late 1930s in anticipation of the conflict with Nazi Germany, as part of the broader Stalinist cultural project. This study undertakes a concise historical review of Alexander Nevsky’s life and his leadership in the 1242 Battle on the Ice, followed by an analysis of his cinematic representation in Eisenstein’s work. Drawing upon the extant Portuguese‑language scholarship, it aims to elucidate continuities and transformations in the political uses of the prince’s memory across Russian history – from the medieval Rus polity to the Soviet era – thereby tracing the consolidation of a twentieth‑century reinterpretation of his figure through the medium of film.
Copyright (c) 2025 Guilherme Faber, Livia Bernardes Marciano https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Varia walks under the rubble: the dictates of “cinema for millions” in Boris Barnet’s mise-en-scène
This article analyzes three sequences from the film "Odnajdy notchiu" to investigate director Boris Barnet's adherence to the dictates of "cinema for millions"—a set of rules of form and content that began to guide Soviet film production from the second half of the 1930s onward, aligning films with the demands of Socialist Realism.
Copyright (c) 2025 Nuno Lindoso https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The "Sistine Madonna": Dostoevsky and the Exercise of Looking
Raphael's ‘Sistine Madonna’, dated around 1513-1514 and housed in the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden, is one of the paintings that most impressed Dostoevsky, to the point that he wrote about it in several of his novels, from Crime and Punishment (Преступление и наказание, 1866) to The Demons (Бесы, 1873) and The Adolescent (Подросток, 1875). Dostoyevsky certainly knew other paintings by Raphael. But then why this insistence on Raphael's canvas? Our hypothesis is that Dostoyevsky perceived, in a totally modern way and outside the historicist schemes of art, the conceptual and symbolic complexity hidden behind the apparent simplicity of the image and the harmonious union between the ideal of Greco-Roman beauty and Christian religious sentiment. Furthermore, with the ‘Sistine Madonna,’ Dostoevsky inaugurates (or perhaps it would be better to say, brings to light) an ecphrastic myth in literature. With his exercise of the gaze, it is not only Raphael's painting that surprises with its ability to attract the gaze of different generations, but it is Dostoevsky himself who creates new interpretative palimpsests of the work, which will flow many years later into the dramatic and bitter reflections of Vasily Grossman, who, as we know, revisits the ‘Sistine Madonna’ to propose a historical reinterpretation that continues to question the observer's gaze to this day.
Copyright (c) 2025 Biagio d'Angelo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Three essays on cinema, by Yuri Tyniánov
Written by Yuri Tynianov in the 1920s, the following essays (“Cinema – Word – Music,” “On Plot and Fabula in Cinema,” and “On the Screenplay”) form a key body of work for understanding the origins of Soviet film theory. A recognized member of the Society for the Study of Poetic Language (OPOIAZ), Tynianov applies the principles of formalist criticism to cinema, proposing a vision of cinema as an autonomous art form characterized by abstraction, fragmentation, and recomposition of expressive elements. In “Cinema – Word – Music,” he analyzes the specificity of cinematic discourse and argues for music as a structuring element of narrative rhythm. In “On Plot and Fabula in Cinema,” he applies the formalist distinction between fabula and plot to film, emphasizing stylistic procedures over predictable narrative content. In “On the Screenplay,” he critiques the conceptual confusion surrounding the role of the screenwriter, defending the screenplay as a distinct artistic form based on cinema’s visual language. These translations aim to make these reflections accessible to the Portuguese-speaking audience, highlighting their pioneering nature and continuing relevance to film studies, especially regarding narrative construction, aesthetic autonomy, and the relationship between literature, image, and sound in cinematic discourse.
Copyright (c) 2025 Raquel Siphone https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
In this second part of Marina Tsvetaeva’s essay Epos and Lyrics in contemporary Russia – Vladimir Mayakovsky and Boris Pasternak the author compares and contrasts the characteristics of both poets, particularly in terms of Epos and Lyrics, giving examples withdrawn from their poems.
Copyright (c) 2020 Aurora Fornoni Bernardini http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
A new study on Chernyshevsky by Camilo Domingues
The present work of scientific divulgation aims presenting to the interested public the recently published book “O que fazer?”, de N. Tchernychévski: a história do romance e de seu gênero literário, which originates from the Ph.D. thesis by Camilo Domingues.
Copyright (c) 2025 Rafael Bonavina https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Horror as Dissonance: Genre Configurations in Soviet Cinema
The article analyzes the presence and configuration of the horror genre in Soviet cinema, focusing on the period from 1922 to 1991. The hypothesis is that horror, historically associated with the irrational and the symbolic, was marginalized under the Soviet regime for being considered incompatible with socialist realism and the dominant ideology. However, the genre manifested itself as an aesthetic of discomfort, anguish, and the unconscious through strategies such as allegory, folkloric or literary adaptation, and the incorporation of gothic atmospheres and unsettling narratives. Drawing from Cultural Studies and employing cultural analysis as a methodology, and based on authors such as Alexander Herbert, Jamie Miller, David Gillespie, Kendall Phillips, Ian Conrich, Stuart Hall, and Lukasz Szulc, the article argues that Soviet horror constituted a language of crisis and cultural dissonance, revealing tensions within the state’s ideological project and its representations of the world.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lucas Fortes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Presentation. Dossier: "Russian Literature for Children and Young People"
Copyright (c) 2025 Daniela Mountian https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The skeleton dolls and other stories of Sophia Andreyevna Tolstaya: presentation and analysis
Sophia Andreyevna Tolstaya (1844-1919) was known as the wife of the great writer Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910). Her image was often reduced to “the wife of", as so many other women in the history of literature. In recent years, however, her own relationship with writing is being recovered, including the posthumous publication of two of her novels, which have already been translated into Portuguese. Within this movement, in this article, we seek to present her only fictional work published during her lifetime, Kukolki-skelettsy i drugie rasskazy, a children’s book, which despite having been published in Russia in 1910, is little mentioned. At first, we will introduce the reader to her work, contextualizing it and presenting its main characteristics. Then we will focus on the literary analysis of the short story that gives the book its name, presenting in parallel the translation of some fragments. With this, we seek to shed light on some of the characteristics of Sofia's prose, as well as to expand – or reconstruct – her image, distancing her from the restrictive nickname "the wife of".
Copyright (c) 2025 Julia Ferrari Duarte do Páteo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Who is socialist realism’s subject? Art, psychology and labor in 1930’s USSR
The article investigates the relationship between Socialist Realism, psychology, and labor in the Soviet Union within the context of the First Five-Year Plan (1929–1932). Focusing on the historical reconstruction of this articulation, the text explores how official aesthetics translated the notion of psychism developed by official psychology into images. The article also highlights the role of individual portraits in fostering competitiveness and shaping the figure of the "new Soviet man" Finally, it questions the epistemological basis of this cultural construction and its instrumentalization by the regime — drawing primarily from an analysis of Óssip Beskin’s book, Formalism in Painting (1933).
Copyright (c) 2025 Thyago Villela https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Russia Through the Eyes of a Girl: One Hundred Years of Children's Literature
In contemporary Russian-language literature for children and teens, nearly all types of relationships with parents are represented — including close, sometimes confrontational, relationships with mothers; relationships with fathers that shape the heroines’ connections to their environment; the presence of the older generation — grandparents — in children’s lives; and relationships with adoptive parents. Through these books, we see the everyday lives of contemporary girls — both children and teens. In today’s digital age, interactions with fathers and mothers can take different forms: relationships with fathers are often shaped through more traditional, “analog” communication, while those with mothers may involve more modern means — such as blogs, where both mothers and daughters can take on the roles of bloggers.
Contemporary Russian children's literature
Copyright (c) 2025 Екатерина Асоновa, Ольга Бухина https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
When melancholy and redemption take the form of a question: reflections on the activity of thought in Crime and Punishment
Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s (2004) reflections on thinking as a fundamental human activity, this paper aims to examine the representation of such activity in the character of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment (1866). To this end, the analysis engages with the concepts of dialogism and polyphony as developed by Mikhail Bakhtin (2018).
Copyright (c) 2025 Hanna Estevam https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Planets, Comets and Meteors: Foreign Writers in Soviet Children's Book Publishing
The article is devoted to the dynamics of representation of world literature in Soviet children's books. The analysis is based on the data of the bibliographic indexes "Children's Literature" (1918-1984), compiled by I. I. Startsev and his followers. We consider general fluctuations in the intensity of publishing translations from European languages in Soviet Russia and the USSR. We start by analyzing the market share occupied by "classics" translated in the pre-Soviet era. We further discuss which European authors and texts fell into the orbit of Soviet children's book publishing and how their composition changed over time during the Soviet era. The article provides general quantitative data for the entire period. The selection of authors for translation during the NEP and Khrushchev’s Thaw is considered in somewhat more detail.
Copyright (c) 2025 Svetlana Maslinskaia, Kirill Maslinsky https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
"What are girls made of?": Gender and Corporeality in Yuri Nagibin's Story "Echo"
Nagibin's short story was one of the first pioneering efforts to address sexuality as a serious issue in young adult literature of the Soviet era. While children's literature carefully avoided depicting children as sexual beings, Nagibin took a risk by demonstrating to his young readers the complexity of portraying the human body as a sexual object. His main character, a little girl named Vit'ka, is seen through the eyes of a young boy who initially denies Vit'ka any sexuality despite seeing her swimming naked but later acknowledges her femininity and beauty only when seeing her dressed as a girl. The story depicts three stages of the girl's transformation: first, her nakedness that both characters accept as gender-neutral; second, her being dressed as a boy and walking around in shorts with a naked torso; and finally, the transition to a "fashioned" body when she is dressed as a proper girl. These three stages of bodily representation provide a confusing duality for the young reader: on the one hand, the story challenges the established sense of Soviet propriety (that nakedness should be shameful); on the other hand, the depiction of Vit'ka being dressed according to appropriate gender codes stresses conformity to rules of "proper" behavior. Thus, instead of challenging dress codes as symbols of proper behavior, the author ultimately surrenders his characters' freedom to the prudent norms and regulations of Soviet society.
Copyright (c) 2025 Marina Balina https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
The anguish of being and the boredom of existing: delusion, fragility, and the collapse of transcendent illusions
This article examines existential anguish in the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and its connection to Emil Cioran’s philosophy, focusing on anguish arising from existential awakening. Through a literary analysis of Crime and Punishment, it demonstrates how characters like Raskolnikov seek to transcend human mediocrity through extreme acts, only to fail when confronted with the reality of their finite condition. Anguish emerges as an identity crisis, exposing the contradiction between grandiose aspirations and human fragility. In dialogue with Cioran’s philosophy, the article explores the interplay between boredom (existential void) and delusion (escape through utopian projects), revealing how the pursuit of meaning intensifies despair. It concludes that, for both authors, anguish is paradoxical: an inevitable suffering, yet also a path to lucidity about the precariousness of existence, challenging individuals to reconstruct meaning without transcendent illusions.
Copyright (c) 2025 Simone Fatima de Oliveira https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Tales of the Past: Russian Children's Literature Abroad Between the Two World Wars
Based on a quantitative analysis of the publishing repertoires that produced Russian-language literature in Europe between 1920 and 1939, this article examines the children's book market. Children's literature exhibited a hierarchy of genres and writers, dominated by the fairy tale genre and two leading authors in this field — Alexander Pushkin and Hans Christian Andersen. Pushkin's works were published largely due to the establishment of Russian Culture Days and the tradition of including his fairy tales in school anthologies. Andersen’s popularity is linked to the embodiment of Romantic aesthetics and philosophical worldview inherited by Russian émigrés. The fairy tale emerged as the leading genre, driven by aesthetic, pedagogical, and pragmatic goals. Despite the substantial number of texts and critics' attention to new children's authors, émigré children's literature continued to be regarded as a lower-tier genre, and the status of the children's writer remained precarious within the literary community. As a result, children were offered canonical texts and folkloric imagery traditionally associated with the essence of the people. The reissuing of works by classic authors and canonical texts of Russian literature formed the cornerstone for transmitting and preserving national cultural traditions and shaping the national identity of children in emigration.
Copyright (c) 2025 Anna Dimianenko https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Experience Shared and Divided: Encyclopedias for Boys and Girls in Former Readers’ Commentary
This study explores the reception of Russian-language “encyclopedias for girls and boys,” a gender-segregated nonfiction genre that delineates conservative views of femininity and masculinity, serving as a form of sex education and behavioral guidance. This genre can be viewed as part of a broader “cultural backlash” following the fall of communism, analogous to trends in the West that fuel right-wing populism, albeit stemming from different historical contexts. This research investigates the interplay between the normative subjects constructed by these gendered encyclopedias and the agency of readers who may resist these prescribed ideologies. Utilizing qualitative methodology, the study analyzes internet comments from past readers, employing Maria Nikolajeva’s concept of the “identification fallacy” to understand the impact of these texts. Findings suggest that while these books create a shared communicative space for a generation of readers, regardless of gender, the intended imposition of conservative values is often met with irony and skepticism in adulthood, indicating a more nuanced impact on identity formation than the genre’s didactic nature presupposes. Along with reader reception, the social life (bytovanie) of these texts is also reconstructed: from practices of acquisition to transfer and censorship.
Copyright (c) 2025 Yauheniya Lekarevich https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
From Gulag to Fairy Tales: Boris Sveshnikov as a Soviet Book Designer Between Nonconformist Art and Children’s Literature
In the 1950s–1980s, working as children’s book designers enabled many Soviet nonconformist artists to have a recognized role within the system. This article introduces an interdisciplinary and intermedial perspective on Soviet children’s book illustration by focusing on the work of Boris Sveshnikov (1927–1998). The artist established his visual style while imprisoned in the Gulag. After his release and exoneration, he transferred this graphic aesthetics to the design of various volumes of fairy tales, both folk and literary ones, within the Soviet project of “world literature” for adults and children. Sveshnikov’s illustrations were rooted in three intertwined contexts: 1) his nonconformist art (camp drawings and later pointillism); 2) his deep interest in romantic and symbolist literature; and 3) Thaw-era book design, which foregrounded the visualization of literary texts through graphic illustrations and hand lettering. The analysis traces Sveshnikov’s engagement with fairytale worlds in image and text as a response to Gulag-wrought trauma and as an aesthetic counterpart to the loosening of socialist realism under conditions of political liberalization.
Copyright (c) 2025 Svetlana Efimova https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0