FOSP’S “Publishing Passion”: on the Materials Held in the Department of Manuscripts of the IWL RAS

Abstract

This article based on the archival material from the Department of manuscripts of IWL RAN discusses the hitherto understudied financial and ideological conditions of the Publishing house of the Federation of Associations of Soviet writers (FOSP) “Federation.” According to the Charter, the Publishing house was a self-financing public publishing house of national significance, enjoying all the rights of a legal entity, and the FOSP was not responsible for its financial activities FOSP. In 1927–1930s, the publishing house sought to be commercially successful. In the 1930s, it submitted to ideological demands and became unprofitable. The ideological dictate and the policy of “prolitarization” led to the fact that in 1931–1932, translation department in the Leningrad branch of FOSP was eliminated and Moscow translation department was eliminated as well. The hithertop unpublished correspondence of the FOSP on the “case of A.K. Vinogradov” as a member of the Moscow section describes circumstances and gives reasons explaining Vinogradov’s refusal to keep translating and his preference of literary criticism and creative writing in the 1930s and 1940s.

Keywords

• financing of literature
• federation of associations of soviet writers
• commercial success
• “proletarization
• ” translation department
• editing
• censorship
• a.k. vinogradov
• publishing house
• archival publication.