Graduation Year
Spring 2012
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Russian
Reader 1
Anne Dwyer
Reader 2
Larissa Rudova
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2012 Maria Karen Whittle
Abstract
Soviet writer Vasilii Grossman has been renowned in the West as a dissident author of Life and Fate, which multiple sources, including The New York Times have called "arguably the greatest Russian novel of the 20th century." Grossman, however, was not a dissident, but an official state writer attempting to publish for a Soviet audience. Grossman's work was criticized by Soviets as being "too Jewish", while Jewish scholars have called it "not Jewish enough." And, despite his modern critical acclaim, little scholarship on Grossman exists. In my thesis, I explore these paradoxes. I argue that Grossman attempts to reinterpret traditional state ideas of Sovietness into a more inclusive, democratic version by creating heroes from traditionally marginalized groups. To do this, he reinterprets and inverts traditional tropes of the Socialist Realist genre. Genric limitations on his worldview, however, prevent this vision from being completely realized in the course of his work. I trace Grossman's work from his early short fiction to his Khruschev era novels and show how this trope develops during his career as a Soviet writer and citizen.
Recommended Citation
Whittle, Maria Karen, "Subverting Socialist Realism: Vasily Grossman's Marginal Heroes" (2012). Pomona Senior Theses. 70.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_theses/70
