Russian-Soviet Literature at Claridad Publishing House. Notes on the Catalog and Direct Translations from the Russian Language

Abstract

In this paper, we show and explain the increasing volume of Soviet literature and political texts by authors of the Russian revolutionary school, which entered Argentina during the 1930s, and the growing trend towards a predilection for direct translation from Russian as a privileged modality of circulation of these texts at publishing house Claridad. We propose the hypothesis that the dissemination of Soviet literature and political essays in direct translation is in tune, firstly, with the ideological affinities of the publishing house with the Russian Revolution and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR); secondly, with the political radicalization of the leftist groups nucleated around Claridad following the coup d’état of José Félix Benito Uriburu and the consequent redirection of the editorial project towards a more political than cultural character; and, finally, with the need of the publishing house to establish a direct bridge between Argentina and the USSR, in a context in which there was a proliferation of journalistic news about the Soviet reality, both from the “bourgeois press” and from Argentine left-wing intellectuals who traveled to the USSR. We also seek to explain the second shift after 1935, when the publishing house returned to publishing authors at the height of 19th century realism and texts on personalities and events in Russian history. We propose that this is due to the fact that democracy becomes a possible model for several sectors of the left, in the heat of World War II and the advance of fascism.