Elena Ostrovskaya, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of the Humanities at the NRU Higher School of Economics. Elena Zemskova, PhD, is an Associate Professor of the Faculty of the Humanities at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, teaching courses in Russian and Comparative Literature.

Elena Ostrovskaya, PhD, and Elena Zemskova, PhD.

International Literature and the Literary International

The paper focuses on International Literature, a world literature journal project launched by the IURW (International Union of Revolutionary Writers, the literary subdivision of the Comintern). Originally conceived as a Russian journal under the name of Herald of Foreign Literature in 1928, the journal was relaunched as a multilingual journal project, Literature of World Revolution, at the Kharkov conference of the IURW in 1930 and then finally underwent another remodelling and relaunching under the name International Literature in 1932-1933. As a multilingual project it was published in four languages, Russian, English, French and German (two issues of the Chinese version were published, but it did not become a regular fifth language). Each of the language versions claimed to be an independent journal; however, the name was the same and not only the name. While the original stimulus for the multilingual journal project was to create a space of world literature based on the utopian model outlined in the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels, the real mechanics of turned out to be a much more complicated and varied thing. The paper will briefly introduce the history of the project over the years, from 1931 to 1943 when the Russian version was cancelled and then to 1945, the last year the journal existed under this name.
Bios

Elena Ostrovskaya, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of the Humanities at the NRU Higher School of Economics. She teaches courses in Russian, English and European Literature, and Translation Studies. Her research interests include Translation Studies and Comparative Literature. She has published articles on poetic translation, the history of literary translation in the USSR in the 1930s and translation and canon-formation.

Elena Zemskova, PhD, is an Associate Professor of the Faculty of the Humanities at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, teaching courses in Russian and Comparative Literature. Her research interests include translation history in Russia and sociology of Soviet literary system. She published articles on translators work and international literary communication in the USSR in the 1930–1940s.