Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Evgeny Dobrenko. The Making of the State Writer: Social and Aesthetic Origins of Soviet Literary Culture. Translated by Jesse M. Savage. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. xxi, 484 pp. $75.00.

Evgeny Dobrenko. The Making of the State Writer: Social and Aesthetic Origins of Soviet Literary... Platonov - the subject of the final two full-length chapters - simultaneously under- takes and undermines the creation of an all-male comradely society in his novel- length Chevengur. Here the architects of the all-male utopia must face up to the nega- tive consequences of the creation of a society based on the principle of gender exclu- sivity. Their attempt to exclude women from the New World backfires; what emerges is a collective organized around ideas of both sexual difference (men are haunted by the absent "other") and the pre-revolutionary patriarchal family. Finally, in his concluding chapter, Borenstein moves into a discussion of the fic- tion written during the period of Stalin's first five-year plan. His emphasis adds a new twist to the now familiar story o f the re-emergence of traditional values under Stalin's tutelage. Women at the close of the decade are freed from the constraints inherent in the striving for a gender exclusive utopia; they return as active agents in their own destinies, albeit in their double role as workers and wives. By this time a masculine utopia no longer seemed viable and femininity no longer elicited hostility. Instead, classical paternalism returns with Stalin as the father. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Canadian-American Slavic Studies Brill

Evgeny Dobrenko. The Making of the State Writer: Social and Aesthetic Origins of Soviet Literary Culture. Translated by Jesse M. Savage. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. xxi, 484 pp. $75.00.

Canadian-American Slavic Studies , Volume 40 (4): 547 – Jan 1, 2006

Loading next page...
 
/lp/brill/evgeny-dobrenko-the-making-of-the-state-writer-social-and-aesthetic-MqJqoV0UaX

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 2006 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0090-8290
eISSN
2210-2396
DOI
10.1163/221023906X00294
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Platonov - the subject of the final two full-length chapters - simultaneously under- takes and undermines the creation of an all-male comradely society in his novel- length Chevengur. Here the architects of the all-male utopia must face up to the nega- tive consequences of the creation of a society based on the principle of gender exclu- sivity. Their attempt to exclude women from the New World backfires; what emerges is a collective organized around ideas of both sexual difference (men are haunted by the absent "other") and the pre-revolutionary patriarchal family. Finally, in his concluding chapter, Borenstein moves into a discussion of the fic- tion written during the period of Stalin's first five-year plan. His emphasis adds a new twist to the now familiar story o f the re-emergence of traditional values under Stalin's tutelage. Women at the close of the decade are freed from the constraints inherent in the striving for a gender exclusive utopia; they return as active agents in their own destinies, albeit in their double role as workers and wives. By this time a masculine utopia no longer seemed viable and femininity no longer elicited hostility. Instead, classical paternalism returns with Stalin as the father.

Journal

Canadian-American Slavic StudiesBrill

Published: Jan 1, 2006

There are no references for this article.