Search results for "Luknitskii"

Carrying the Red Man's Burden: Pavel Luknitskii, or Kipling in the Soviet Pamir

2018

Kipling’s work in the Soviet Union was heavily criticized as an expression of imperialism; yet, it was widely read and translated – it was clearly more acceptable than that of Nikolai Gumilev, “the Kipling from Tsarskoe Selo”, a purported counter-revolutionary whose name itself was forbidden. This explains the apparent contradictions in the image of Pavel Luknitskii – from one side, a scholar of Gumilev, from the other, an official Soviet writer. His novel Nisso (1946), based on his travels in the Pamir, is a classic of Soviet literature about the Asian republics. The novel’s plot is built around a classic Colonial triangle, mixed with a typical Soviet collectivization story. The setting pu…