Introduction: Writers at the Risk of Literature. The State and Intellectuals in Soviet Armenia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5077/journals/connexe.2022.e1042Keywords:
Armenia, Literature, USSR, History, National QuestionAbstract
This article focuses on Armenian-Soviet literature and examines the relationship between communist power and writers. The latter were subject to the injunctions of a totalitarian state which, since Lenin, has always considered literature as an instrument of propaganda, and writers – and more generally intellectuals – as auxiliaries of the Party. Hence the difficulty of dealing with literary currents and aesthetics independently of the various phases of the history of the USSR. In addition to issues common to non-Russian peoples – is it a national or provincial literature? –, in Armenia, we can add those specific to a country that has inherited diverse cultural influences after several centuries of division between empires, a double linguistic norm (Eastern and Western), and a worldwide diaspora resulting from the genocide of 1915. We can thus measure the effects of the attempt to standardise a literature that must be "national in form, socialist in content", often leading to its folklorisation, but also a degree of resistance to this process by the "engineers of souls".
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