Search results for "Soviet fiction"

The Soviet Spy Thriller. Writers, Power, and the Masses, 1938-2002

2022

It is commonly held among scholars that in the Stalin years no specific mass literature existed in the Soviet Union; what do we do, then, with Lev Ovalov’s Major Pronin or with Lev Sheinin’s stories, which began to appear since the mid-Thirties? What about Nikolai Shpanov’s post-war million-sellers? The Soviet authorities did not like to admit that they published low-quality literature aimed at the uncultured masses; they valued, however, its propa- ganda potential, hence this contradictory situation. Spy narratives, moreover, connected as they are with conspiracy theories, were of course welcomed in the atmosphere of the great purges. These works are no continuation of the “Red Pinkerton” …