Elena Zemskova

This interdisciplinary study examines literary translation from the languages of Soviet nationalities into Russian during the Stalin era, analyzing translation as both an instrument of imperial control and a space of cultural negotiation within the Soviet totalitarian system. It explores how the Soviet state built a centralized system of literary management that produced "multinational Soviet literature," substituting ideological constructs for actual cultural diversity. Beginning in 1932, the Soviet state reorganized literary production as a kind of industrial enterprise, granting translated literature a leading role and turning translators into well-paid cultural workers. Drawing on archival sources, the study examines three interrelated dimensions of this phenomenon: the institutional production of translated literature within the Soviet system; the poetics of translation in the context of socialist realism; and the experience of translators as Soviet subjects negotiating loyalty and cultural mediation. It traces these questions through the biographical trajectories of key figures, including Alexander Romm, Adelina Adalis, Arseny Tarkovsky, Maria Petrovykh, Semyon Lipkin, and Boris Pasternak.