On the role of translated literature in constructing the "new Soviet person": Anglophone fiction in Soviet Latvia of the 1940s

Evita Badina ()
Additional contact information
Evita Badina: Daugavpils University, Latvia

Eastern Journal of European Studies, 2021, vol. 12(2), 280-297

Abstract: In Latvia, the Soviet regime played a crucial role in the transformation of people's values. Latvians had to be moulded into "New Soviet People" - educated, hardworking, collectivistic, patriotic, loyal to the Communist Party and superior to any other human in the world. A "New Soviet Person" had to be ready to oppose all the threats of capitalism and eventually conquer the world. The research aim is to examine the ways Soviet officials tended to employ literature from ideologically opposite countries to implant 'appropriate' socialist values into society. On the example of British and American fiction presented in the public space of Latvia in the 1940s, the process of constructing a "Soviet identity" is considered. Soviet Latvia periodicals of the 1940s were used as a main data-collecting instrument revealing policies and practices of society moral education carried out by the regime ideologists.

Keywords: Latvia; Soviet ideology; 'new Soviet person'; Anglophone literature; the press (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ejes.uaic.ro/articles/EJES2021_1202_BAD.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jes:journl:y:2021:v:12(1):p:280-297

DOI: 10.47743/ejes-2021-0214

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Eastern Journal of European Studies from Centre for European Studies, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alupului Ciprian ().