Introduction | CU Experts

Abstract; The Introduction establishes the main arguments of Writing the Nation After Stalin. In the post-Stalin period, a multinational cohort of Soviet writers from villages developed an ethnic nationalist ideology in their literary works that identified the nation with the traditional village and depicted it as a superior source of moral values than the Communist Party. The Introduction traces the entangled ideas of “nation” and “village” in eastern Europe from nineteenth-century German Romanticism to Bolshevik nationality policy in the USSR in the early twentieth century. After the death of Stalin, nationalist ideology grew out of the efforts of Soviet village writers to enact “de-Stalinization from below” by challenging oppressive Stalinist policies toward the peasantry. These ideas developed in the crucible of the “cultural politics of nationality”—the fierce struggle among cultural and political elites over the representation of the nation within official Soviet institutions. Rural nationalism emerged in Soviet literature in the 1960s and became a dominant force in the 1970s. After Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and loosened censorship, nationalist movements—many of which were led by village writers—seized upon this “ideology-in-waiting.” The problem of separatist nationalism sent the Soviet system into crisis, precipitating the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

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