Background
Dobrenko, Evgeny A. was born on April 4, 1962 in Odessa, Ukraine. Son of Alexander S. Dobrenko and Faina M. Kupsan.
( In Soviet culture, the reader was never a consumer of ...)
In Soviet culture, the reader was never a consumer of books” in the Western sense. According to the aesthetic doctrine at the heart of Socialist Realism, the reader was a subject of education, to be reforged and molded. Because of this, Soviet culture cannot be examined properly without taking into account the reading masses. This book is a history of the shaping of the reader of Soviet literature, a history of the State appropriation of the reader.” The entire history of the formation and transformation of the institution of literature in the revolutionary and Soviet eras bears witness to the fact that literature was called upon to perform substantive political and ideological functions in the authorities’ overall system (which included the publishing business, the book trade, libraries, and schools) aimed at ultimately creating a new Soviet person. This book shows how people from various social classes, in a dynamic unknown in pre-Soviet history, not only consumed the products of a new culture but in fact created that culture. On its own, the sociology of reading is scarcely capable of uncovering the variety, dynamism, and multilayered structure of the process of reading, for the reader is a composite figure. Soviet society in the Stalin era was not only a State-hierarchy system, but also a mosaic that was always divided into definite cultural strata, each of which consumed its own culture, which performed a host of familiar functionsescapist, socializing, compensating, informative, recreational, prestige-enhancing, aesthetic, and emotionalin addition to the specifically Soviet tastes connected with propaganda and mobilization. If we superimpose on this spectrum the diverse characteristics of individual readers, the resulting picture is extraordinarily variegated. At the same time, there is a certain cultural space in which these factors intersectthe space the author defines as the situation of reading.” In this book, he focuses on the basic lines of force that were at work in the Soviet reading space.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804728542/?tag=2022091-20
( This book completes the author's study of the sociology...)
This book completes the author's study of the sociology of the literary process in Soviet Russia, begun in The Making of the State Reader: Social and Aesthetic Contexts of the Reception of Soviet Literature (Stanford, 1997). The history of the literary process of the Soviet era, understood as the living process of the clash of political and ideological aspirations and the interests and psychology of cultural elites, allows one to understand the social origins and cultural aims of Stalinist art in an entirely new way. Previous scholarship has concentrated largely on Sovietological answers to the basic problems of Stalinist aesthetics—such as "political control," "repressions," and "pressure from the regime." However, the author demonstrates that Socialist Realism is not so much directed as it is self-directed; it is not a matter of control but of self-control. The transformation of the author into his own censor is the true history of Soviet literature. Socialist Realism is cultural revolution not only from above but from below as well. The state simply took into account, and accurately discerned, the demands of the masses, and Soviet literature became the reader's answer to these demands. The reader not only shaped Socialist Realist aesthetics down to his own expectations, but in fact created it. The Soviet writer was yesterday's Soviet reader who had learned how to write books. The Soviet writer can be called the product of authority only to the extent that this authority recognized and institutionalized what Lenin called the "lively creativity of the masses." On the other hand, the author shows, the Soviet writer is the radical realization and embodiment of the nineteenth-century Russian populist utopia of enlightenment of the people.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804733643/?tag=2022091-20
Dobrenko, Evgeny A. was born on April 4, 1962 in Odessa, Ukraine. Son of Alexander S. Dobrenko and Faina M. Kupsan.
Master of Arts, Odessa State University, 1985. Doctor of Philosophy, Odessa State University, 1987. Postgraduate, University Zagreb, Croatia, 1989—1990.
Postgraduate, Moscow State University, 1991—1992.
Lecturer, assistant professor department Russian language for foreign students Odessa State University, 1987—1990, assistant professor department Soviet literature and literature of the peoples of Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, 1990—1991. Assistant professor historical and philological faculty Russian State University for Humanities, 1991—1992. Associate professor department Slavic languages and literature Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, 1992—1997.
Visiting professor department Slavic languages and literature, Stanford Humanities Center faculty fellow Stanford (California) University, 1997—1998. Karl Loewenstein faculty fellow in political science Amherst (Massachusetts) University, 1998—1999. Visiting professor program in Russia University California, Irvine, 1999—2000.
Reader department Russian and Slavonic studies University Nottingham, England, 2000—2002, professor department Russian and Slavonic studies England, since 2003. Faculty fellow International Center for Advanced Studies New York University, 2002—2003. Member international advisory board Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, 1992—1998.
Member art and science council Duke University, 1995—1997. Member selection committee National Integrated Electronics, 2000. Member executive committee University Nottingham, School Modern Languages, 2001, member research committee, 03.
Outside/peer reviewer various journals.
( This book completes the author's study of the sociology...)
( In Soviet culture, the reader was never a consumer of ...)
Member of Modern Language Association, AATSEEL, AAASS, BASSEES.
Married Liudmila S. Nedialkova, October 8, 1982. Children: Tatiana, Vladimir.