The Lives of the Socialist Literary Journal: Embedded Modes of Independent Culture under State Socialism

In the Soviet Union and socialist Eastern Europe, literary journals enjoyed remarkable popularity. They not only provided access to sensational works of literature but figured as visually appealing objects and social events in everyday life. Against the background of the supposedly isolated and monolithic cultures of twentieth-century state socialism, they are often described through metaphors such as “windows to the world,” “islands of freedom,” or sites of “permitted dissent.” But what if this cultural form and institution is not an exception within its larger context but, rather, an essential and firmly integrated element? The methodological lens of periodical studies—the combined analysis of visual, literary, and social dimensions of journals—reveals socialist culture from an alternative angle. The synthetic mode of analysis, including the distant reading of the journals’ data, offers a different vision of freedoms and limitations in cultural production.

This lecture focuses on several case studies from the 1960s and 1970s in the USSR and Czechoslovakia, especially the two journals Inostrannaia literatura (Moscow) and Světová literatura (Prague). Inasmuch as these periodicals continue precedents from the early 20-th century, the lecture argues, they provide models for independent and participatory modes of cultural production and reception that are an essential feature of East European socialism.

Philip Tuxbury-Gleissner is an assistant professor in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures at Ohio State. He specializes in Soviet and Czech twentieth-century culture, queer studies, migration, and digital humanities. Together with Helena Goscilo, he is the editor of the new online journal SQS: Slavic Queer Studies. His edited volume (with Harry Eli Kashdan) Resilient Kitchens: American Immigrant Cooking in a Time of Crisis won the 2024 James Beard Media Award. Together with Bradley Gorski, he also edited the collection Red Migrations: Transnational Mobility and Leftist Culture after 1917. In Spring 2025 University of Toronto Press will publish his monograph, titled Subscribing to Sovietdom: The Lives of the Socialist Literary Journal.