How life writes the book : real socialism and socialist realism in Stalin's Russia

"A gripping, unsettling, and highly original book that turns the making of a Soviet socialist-realist classic--Azhaev's Far from Moscow--into a detective story, and sheds as strange and ambiguous a light on the Stalin era, from gulag to Writers' Union, as one could hope for. Lahusen is a disarmingly low-key scholarly virtuoso who performs simultaneously as an archive-based historian, an interpreter of texts (including Azhaev's own self-organized archive), and a gently relentless biographer whose stalking of his prey is reminiscent of Nabokov. The final chilling paragraph typically economical and understated, is a reminder that the author/investigator, too, is a collaborator in the multiple reworkings of Azhaev's text, and of his life, that How Life Writes the Book has so finely analyzed."--Sheila Fitzpatrick, University of Chicago "This is a wonderfully original work: a history of a book, a literary analysis of an age, a montage of a life. Lahusen writes with a postmodern sensibility but without the postmodernist jargon."--Yuri Slezkine, University of California, Berkeley "Thomas Lahusen has written an imaginative and archivally grounded book that presents the most fascinating picture to date of the literary process that produced canonical works of Socialist Realism and the people who wrote them. How Life Writes the Book is alternatingly chilling and funny as it demonstrates the interpenetration of literary institutions, massive construction projects and the Soviet system of prison camps and slave labor. With this study, as with his earlier Intimacy and Terror, Lahusen continues his own project of revolutionizing our understanding of the Soviet subject and Soviet subjectivity."--Eric Naiman, University of California, Berkeley "Lahusen's case study marks a new genre of inquiry into the very nature of socialist realism, a genre which became possible after archives and memory in Russia regained their voice. It shows how life is transformed into Soviet myth."--Hans Gnther, editor of The Culture of the Stalin Period This Remarkable Volume Is At Once A History Of A Book And An Attempt To Come To Terms With The Traumatic Experience Of A Man And His Generation. Thomas Lahusen Was Doing Research On Far From Moscow, A Classic Socialist Realist Novel By A Writer Named Vasilii Azhaev, When He Made An Astonishing Discovery. Azhaev Had Assembled An Extensive Personal Archive Integrating His Personal History With The Political History Of His Time. Drawing On The Archive, Lahusen Reconstructs The Genesis, Writing, Reworking, And Reception Of The Stalin Prize Novel. He Leads Us From A Forced Labor Camp To The Highest Reaches Of The Soviet Literary Bureaucracy And Back Again, In The Process Helping Us Better To Understand The Failure Of The Bold Soviet Effort To Integrate Literature And Life, Utopia And Reality. Blending Historical Analysis, Fiction, Biography, And Even Autobiography, Lahusen Gives Us An Unrivaled Picture Of The Vicissitudes Of Literature And Life In Stalin's Russia. The Volume Includes An Array Of Rare Illustrations Depicting Moments In Azhaev's Life And That Of His Generation. The Result Is A Book That Frames In New And Provocative Ways The Questions That Continue To Baffle And Terrify Anyone Who Seriously Contemplates The Stalinist Era. 1. Project No. 15 -- 2. Utopics: The Second Baku And The Other Of Place -- 3. The Beginning -- 4. Camp Freedom: The Oath; Or, On Transference-love -- 5. Personal Files -- 6. Borderline I: Rubezhansk -- 7. The Notebooks Of Komsomol'sk -- 8. Far From Moscow -- 9. Borderline Ii: To Moscow! -- 10. Between Engineers: More On Transference-love -- 11. A Thousand And One Nights: Far From Moscow And Its Readers -- 12. The Screen -- 13. Borderline Iii: The Death Of The Chekist -- Epilogue: How Life Finishes Writing The Book -- Appendix. Decree Of The Supreme Soviet Of The Ussr On Awards To Construction Workers Of Special Projects, 30 October 1942. Thomas Lahusen. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 211-242) And Index.