Slavistische Beiträge ∙ Band 406 (eBook - Digi20-Retro) Irene E. Kolchinsky The Revival of the Russian Literary Avantgarde The Thaw Generation and Beyond Verlag Otto Sagner München ∙ Berlin ∙ Washington D.C. Digitalisiert im Rahmen der Kooperation mit dem DFG-Projekt „Digi20“ der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, München. OCR-Bearbeitung und Erstellung des eBooks durch den Verlag Otto Sagner: http://verlag.kubon-sagner.de © bei Verlag Otto Sagner. Eine Verwertung oder Weitergabe der Texte und Abbildungen, insbesondere durch Vervielfältigung, ist ohne vorherige schriftliche Genehmigung des Verlages unzulässig. «Verlag Otto Sagner» ist ein Imprint der Kubon & Sagner GmbH. Irene E. Kolchinsky - 9783954790357 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:33:09AM via free access S l a v i s t i c h e Beiträge Herausgegeben von Peter Rehder Beirat: Tilman Berger • Walter Breu • Johanna Renate Döring-Smimov Walter Koschmal • Ulrich Schweier • Milos Sedmidubsky • Klaus Steinke BAND 406 V e r l a g O t t o S a g n e r M ü n c h e n 2001 Irene E. Kolchinsky - 9783954790357 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:33:09AM via free access Irene Kolchinsky The Revival of the Russian Literary Avant-Garde: • • the Thaw Generation and Beyond V e r l a g O t t o S a g n e r M ü n c h e n 2001 Irene E. Kolchinsky - 9783954790357 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:33:09AM via free access >0066063 PVA 2001. 4096 ISBN 3-87690-799-3 © Verlag Otto Sagner, München 2001 Abteilung der Firma Kubon & Sagner D-80328 München Gedruckt auf alterungsbeständigem Papier laytrlM h• Л Irene E. Kolchinsky - 9783954790357 StetaMtoUotM• DownloadedI from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:33:09AM r via free access 00056063 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the Russian and East European Center (REEC) of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for awarding me a grant for the purpose of traveling to Moscow, Russia, which was vital for my research on this project. My deep gratitude goes to Nikolai Nikolaevich Glazkov and Iulian Osipovich Dolgin, both from Moscow, for informative discussions and for allowing me access to their personal archives. I am also thankful to Gabriel Superfin, who pointed me toward the unpublished materials important for my study, and guided me in my search for them in the archives of the East European Center of Bremen University. 1 would like to thank Professor Maurice Friedberg (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) for encouragement, constructive criticism, and practical advice throughout this project. Professor Richard Tempest (University of Illinois at Urbana• Champaign) offered invaluable aid at all stages of my work, and I express my special appreciation of his constant support. Professor Mikhail Epstein (Emory University) deserves abundant thanks for thoughtful insights and stimulating conversations on the subject. I am greatly indebted to Anne Berggren for her meticulous editorial help. My son Artemy was always ready to provide me his insightful support. Finally, I wish to express my profound gratitude to my husband, Alexander Kolchinsky, who read the drafts of the manuscript more than once and who helped in innumerable ways in the execution of this project. It is to Alexander that I would like to dedicate this book. Irene E. Kolchinsky - 9783954790357 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:33:09AM via free access Irene E. Kolchinsky - 9783954790357 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:33:09AM via free access 00056063 TABLE OF CONTENTS P reface.............................................................................................................. 9 Chapter I. Russian Avant-Garde in The 1940s: Nikolai Glazkov Introduction.............................................................................................................11 “...But, Comrades, I Do Not Fit In Any Framework” ......................................... 17 The “Nebyvalists” ..................................................................................................26 “I Am a Poet of the Era Yet to Come...” ............................................................ 38 Chapter II. Russian Avant-Garde in the 1950s and Beyond: The Thaw Generation After S ta lin .............................................................................................................79 Andrei Voznesenskii.............................................................................................120 Vsevolod N ekrasov............................................................................................... 155 Conclusion.......................................................................................................189 Selected Bibliography....................................................................................193 Index................................................................................................................ 199 Irene E. Kolchinsky - 9783954790357 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:33:09AM via free access Irene E. Kolchinsky - 9783954790357 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:33:09AM via free access 00056063 PREFACE This study is devoted to the authors who initiated the revival of the Russian avant- garde tradition, which had been brutally suppressed by the Soviet authorities in the mid- 1930s. The revival of this tradition took place in the literary underground, where writers who endeavored to fulfil this challenging task largely remained until the collapse of the Soviet regime. Most of them emerged from obscurity only at the beginning of the 1990s, which explains why their dramatic and fascinating history has been so little examined by scholars. Although the situation has changed significantly in the last decade, during which some insightful studies have appeared in both Russia and the West, the subject obviously requires more thorough and systematic exploration. My book aims to narrow important gaps in the scholarship on the Russian literary avant-garde during its least investigated period.1 The Soviet authorities' intolerance for experimental art became apparent in the late 1920s and grew steadily worse in the years to follow. Labeled as “formalism,” experimental art was seen as the chief opponent of Socialist Realism, whose official establishment in 1934 marked a clear end to the first wave of the Russian avant-garde. Only twenty years later, with the beginning of the Thaw, did avant-garde trends in art and literature become visible again, leading to the wide-spread assumption that no experimental art whatsoever had been produced in Russia for almost two decades. Yet this assumption is wrong. As I discovered in the course of my research, the revival of the avant-garde tradition began in the darkest years of Staling rule, largely thanks to the samizdat activities of a young Moscow poet, Nikolai Glazkov (1919-1979). His early verses, written between the late 1930s and the late 1940s, showed a close connection to the major poets of the first Russian avant-garde - Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh, and the early Maiakovskii. Although Glazkov, who used to call himself “a Neofuturist,” appeared to be the single most important avant-garde author of the 1940s, he has remained largely unknown and virtually unstudied. This study of the poet’s 1 Fragments o f this work were published in The Russian Review, 57, no. 3 (!998); Slavic and East European Journal, 43, no. I (1999); Russian Literature, 50, no. I (2001); and Voprosy literatury, no. 3 (2000). The latter article, as well as all o f my other publications in Russian, appeared under my maiden name. Irina Vinokurova. Irene E. Kolchinsky - 9783954790357 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 02:33:09AM via free access 00056063 10 samizdat writings is the first in any language. In support of my analysis I use unpublished manuscripts and other unique materials I discovered while working in private archives in Russia. After Stalin's death in 1953, and beginning with the so-called Thaw, the experimental tradition became significantly stronger. ІЪе second wave of the Russian avant-garde began to emerge, initiated by poets who would later be known as the Thaw generation. Bom between 1932 and 1938, they began their creative careers in the late 1950s. Although during this period the official attitude toward “formalism” became less intolerant, the most radical and innovative of these poets still had to work in the literary underground. This book offers a detailed survey of the various unofficial avant-garde groups that sprang up during the Thaw, as well as of individual writers who became active during this period: the Leningrad Neofuturists, the Chertkov group, the so-called Lianozovo poets, and Gennadii Aigi. I also touch on the fate of the “semi-official” avant- garde author Victor Sosnora and the “official” avant-gardist Andrei Voznesenskii, who managed to become an accepted member of the Soviet establishment and pursue a triumphant career. Even now, he effectively outdoes the former underground poets in popularity, remaining - in the eyes of many - the most significant (if not the only) avant- garde author of the Thaw generation. The persistence of this belief prompted me to take a « closer look at Voznesenskii's poetic development and his real impact on the experimental tradition. I also focus individually on a representative of the unofficial avant-garde poetry, Vsevolod Nekrasov, who chose to spend more than three decades in the literary underground rather than bow to the state’s political and aesthetic demands. This study of the poets who initiated