Collective and Individual Identity Formation in the Soviet Picaresque Novel, 1921-1938

FAIN: FT-259659-18

Cassio Ferreira de Oliveira
Portland State University (Portland, OR 97207-0751)

Research and writing leading to a book on the genre of the picaresque novel under the Soviet regime in the years 1921-1938.

Archival research and completion of book chapter on Soviet picaresque narratives. In my book manuscript, I analyze the role of the picaresque as a locus of individual resistance, ambivalence, and apparent reconciliation vis-à-vis the Soviet regime. The picaresque narrates the adventures of a character in the margins of society and his attempts at social ascension and rehabilitation across the territory of a rapidly changing USSR. As a mode of writing and of literary representation of the Soviet Union’s breakneck development, the picaresque suited writers as a means to come to terms with disparate aspects of life in communism. Much as the classical picaresque at once depicted and undermined the Spanish colonial enterprise in the Age of Discoveries, the Soviet picaresque narratives participated in an empire-building project while questioning the basic tenets of the communist experiment.

Associated Products

“Why is There a Bull on the Magazine Cover?” The Readers of the Soviet Magazine "30 Days" (Blog Post)
Title: “Why is There a Bull on the Magazine Cover?” The Readers of the Soviet Magazine "30 Days"
Author: Cassio de Oliveira
Abstract: Better known nowadays for having been the venue for the publication in installments of Il’ia Il’f and Evgenii Petrov’s famous novels The Twelve Chairs and The Golden Calf (published in 1928 and 1931 respectively), "30 Days" also holds a unique place in the Soviet publishing environment between the NEP Era and the First Five-Year Plan. In this post, de Oliveira sheds light on the distinctive features of "30 Days" by focusing on archival evidence about the makeup of its readership.
Date: 09/19/2018
Primary URL: https://u.osu.edu/seej/2018/09/19/why-is-there-a-bull-on-the-magazine-cover-the-readers-of-the-soviet-magazine-30-days/
Primary URL Description: Link to the blog post.
Blog Title: Slavic and East European Blog
Website: Slavic and East European Journal

O “Amor Brasileiro” de Vsiévolod Ivanov [Vsevolod Ivanov's "Brazilian Love"] (Article)
Title: O “Amor Brasileiro” de Vsiévolod Ivanov [Vsevolod Ivanov's "Brazilian Love"]
Author: Cassio de Oliveira
Abstract: In 1926, Vsevolod Ivanov, a pioneering Soviet writer canonized on the pages of the legendary journal "Krasnaia Nov," published a short story entitled “A Brazilian Love” in the illustrated magazine "30 Dnei." There is no evidence that Ivanov ever visited Brazil, suggesting that the representation of the country in the short story is founded on second-hand information; on the other hand, not only does Ivanov produce a stereotype of a distant and exotic culture in “A Brazilian Love,” but he also transposes onto that world a lingering hesitation regarding the Soviet reality, generating a kind of cultural translation of the uncertainties of the Bolshevik project into a mythical Amazon Forest literally inhabited by Russian émigrés.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://www.revistas.usp.br/rus/issue/view/11828/1923
Primary URL Description: Complete journal issue. Article can be found on pp. 150-165.
Secondary URL: https://www.revistas.usp.br/rus/article/view/174738
Secondary URL Description: Article page, with DOI.
Access Model: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: RUS: Revista de Literatura e Cultura Russa
Publisher: Departamento de Letras Orientais, Universidade de São Paulo

Writing Rogues: The Soviet Picaresque and Identity Formation, 1921-1938 (Book)
Title: Writing Rogues: The Soviet Picaresque and Identity Formation, 1921-1938
Author: Cassio de Oliveira
Editor: Richard Ratzlaff
Abstract: Plot elements such as adventure, travel to far-flung regions, the criminal underworld, and embezzlement schemes are not usually associated with Soviet literature, yet an entire body of work produced between the October Revolution and the Stalinist Great Terror was constructed around them. In "Writing Rogues," Cassio de Oliveira sheds light on the picaresque and its marginal characters - rogues and storytellers - who populated the Soviet Union on paper and in real life. The picaresque afforded authors the means to articulate and reflect on the Soviet collective identity, a class-based utopia that rejected imperial power and attempted to deemphasize national allegiances. Combining new readings of canonical works with in-depth analysis of neglected texts, "Writing Rogues" explores the proliferation of characters left on the sidelines of the communist transition, including gangsters, con men, and petty thieves, many of them portrayed as ethnic minorities. The book engages with scholarship on Soviet subjectivity as well as classical picaresque literature in order to explain how the subversive rogue - such as Ilf and Petrov’s wildly popular cynic and schemer Ostap Bender - in the process of becoming a fully fledged Soviet citizen, came to expose and embody the contradictions of Soviet life itself. "Writing Rogues" enriches our understanding of how literature was called upon to participate in the construction of Soviet identity. It demonstrates that the Soviet picaresque resonated with individual citizens’ fears and aspirations as it recorded the country’s transformation into the first communist state.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://www.mqup.ca/writing-rogues-products-9780228014102.php
Primary URL Description: Book page on the publisher's website.
Access Model: Cloth and eBook.
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780228014102
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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