Literary Association of the Red Army and Navy and the Union of Soviet Writers: Unpacking the Origins of Social Realism

Abstract

The article gives an overview of the institutional history of the Literary Association of the Red Army and Navy (LOCAF) and highlights its main practical activities. It argues that after the Decree “On the restructuring of literary organizations ...” LOCAF became a lost-free member of the Union of Soviet Writers (CSP) as the Commission of Defense Fiction. The author of the article believes that LOCAF partly anticipated organizational and ideological principles of the CSP as well as largely developed the key categories of social realism, future mainstream method of Soviet literature. These provisions bear on the material of hitherto unknown archival materials and obscure publications in the periodical press.

Keywords

• Literary Association of the Red Army and Navy (LOCAF)
• Union of Soviet Writers
• socialist realism
• narodnost’
• mass literature