The Trial Begins/On Socialist Realism

Abram Tertz, one of the most important writers to emerge in the USSR since WWII, came to prominence in 1959 when "On Socialist Realism" was published in the West. It was the 1st important critique of the central dogma of Soviet literature. It arrived with a novel. "The Trial Begins," which was published in 1960. Other books followed these into the West, until in 1965 a respected literary scholar at the Gorky Institute, Andrei Sinyavsky was arrested, revealed to be Abram Tertz, tried, & sentenced to seven years in a forced labor camp.

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On Socialist Realism (1959) criticised the poor quality of the drearily positive-toned, conflict-free strictures in the style of the state-backed Socialist Realism, & called for a return to the fantastic in Soviet literature, the tradition, he said, of Gogol & Vladimir Mayakovsky.

The Trial Begins (1960) a short novel with characters reacting in different ways to their roles in a totalitarian society, told with elements of the fantastic.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 219 pages

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