1934–1991 creative union of professional writers in the Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Writers, USSR Union of Writers, or Soviet Union of Writers (Russian: Союз писателей СССР, romanized: Soyuz pisatelei SSSR) was a creative union of professional writers in the Soviet Union.[1] It was founded in 1934 on the initiative of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (1932) after disbanding a number of other writers' organizations, including Proletkult and the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers.
The aim of the Union was to achieve party and state control in the field of literature. For professional writers, membership of the Union became effectively obligatory, and non-members had much more limited opportunities for publication. The result was that exclusion from the Union meant a virtual ban on publication. However, the history of the Union of Writers also saw cases of voluntary self-exclusion from its cadre. Thus, Vasily Aksyonov, Semyon Lipkin, and Inna Lisnyanskaya left the Union of Writers in a show of solidarity after the exclusion of Viktor Yerofeyev and Yevgeny Popov in punishment for self-publishing.
Andrei Zhdanov gave the opening address to the first Soviet Writers' Congress in August 1934, stating the "tendentious" purpose of literature as forming Marxist ideology in the minds of Soviets and illustrating the centrality of ideologically-pure literature to the Soviet and Stalinist project:
Our Soviet literature is not afraid of the charge of being "tendentious". Yes, Soviet literature is tendentious, for in an epoch of class struggle there is not and cannot be a literature which is not class literature, not tendentious, allegedly non-political.[2]
After the end of the Soviet Union, the Union of Soviet Writers was divided into separate organizations for each of the post-Soviet states. The Russian section was transformed into the Union of Russian Writers.
^Garrard, John; Carol Garrard (1990). Inside the Soviet Writers' Union. London: Tauris. p. xv. ISBN 9781850432609.
^Maxim Gorky; Karl Radek; Nikolai Bukharin; Andrey Zhdanov; et al. (1977). Soviet Writers' Congress 1934, The Debate on Socialist Realism and Modernism. London: Lawrence and Wishart. ISBN 085315-401-5.
and 22 Related for: Union of Soviet Writers information
The UnionofSovietWriters, USSR UnionofWriters, or SovietUnionofWriters (Russian: Союз писателей СССР, romanized: Soyuz pisatelei SSSR) was a creative...
ofSovietWriters was an all-Union meeting ofwriters, held in Moscow from August 17 to September 1, 1934, which led to the founding of the Unionof Soviet...
The SovietUnion, officially the UnionofSoviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991...
The culture of the SovietUnion passed through several stages during the country's 69-year existence. It was contributed to by people of various nationalities...
its 69-year history, the SovietUnion usually had a de facto leader who would not necessarily be head of state or even head of government but would lead...
dissident writersof the future, Zamyatin and Bulgakov had serious problems with publishing their books due to censorship in the SovietUnion. Since the...
other creative unions such as Proletkult and the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians, was disbanded and the UnionofSovietWriters was established...
romanized: Operatsiya Barbarossa) was the invasion of the SovietUnion by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941,...
The economy of the SovietUnion was based on state ownership of the means of production, collective farming, and industrial manufacturing. An administrative-command...
Constitution of the SovietUnion recognised the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (between 1938 and 1989) and the earlier Central Executive Committee (CEC) of the...
uniting Russian and writers (novelists, poets, essayists, etc.). It was established in 1991, when on the basis of the UnionofSovietWriters three independent...
official jobs. In December 1971 a popular Soviet bard, Alexander Galich, was expelled from the UnionofSovietWriters for publishing uncensored works abroad...
"On Several Reasons for the Lag in Soviet Dramaturgy" at a plenary session of the board of the SovietWriters' Union in December 1948, Alexander Fadeyev...
After the Munich Agreement, the SovietUnion pursued a rapprochement with Nazi Germany. On 23 August 1939 the SovietUnion signed a non-aggression pact with...
around the world. UnionofSovietWriters (in SovietUnion) Association des Écrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires (in France) Association of Proletarian-Revolutionary...
SovietUnion introduced forced collectivization (Russian: Коллективизация) of its agricultural sector between 1928 and 1940 during the ascension of Joseph...
up the SovietUnion in 1922 with Vladimir Lenin in charge. At first, it was treated as an unrecognized pariah state because of its repudiating of tsarist...
and peoples to self-determination. The SovietUnion claimed to be supportive of self-determination and rights of many minorities and colonized peoples...