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The Ethnic Avant-Garde: Minority Cultures and World Revolution

The Ethnic Avant-Garde: Minority Cultures and World Revolution DOI 10.1215/00104124-3698517 The Ethnic Avant-Garde: Minority Cultures and World Revolution. By Steven S. Lee. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. 285 p. Midway through The Ethnic Avant-Garde, Steven Lee tells the story of Paul Robeson's 1949 visit to the Soviet Union, during which he saw his old friend Itzik Feffer, a Soviet Jewish writer caught up in Stalin's postwar anti-Semitic purges. Seeking to persuade Robeson that Feffer was safe, Soviet officials sent him to Robeson's bugged hotel room, but using gestures and scribbled notes Feffer was able to communicate the fact of his imprisonment and likely execution. While Robeson protested this by singing Yiddish songs at a Leningrad concert soon after -- a jab at Stalinist orthodoxy at a moment when Yiddish periodicals, schools, and book publications were being liquidated or discontinued -- he denied the existence of Soviet anti-Semitism on his return to the United States, "maintaining the party line over all other considerations" (178). In many ways this incident outlines the ambitions, the obstacles, and what Lee calls the "revolutionary pathos" of the book as a whole. It registers the enduring role that a utopian excitement about the Soviet Union played in the politics and culture http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Literature Duke University Press

The Ethnic Avant-Garde: Minority Cultures and World Revolution

Whalan, Mark
Comparative Literature , Volume 68 (4) – Dec 1, 2016
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Duke Univ Press
ISSN
0010-4124
eISSN
1945-8517
DOI
10.1215/00104124-3698527
Publisher site
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Abstract

DOI 10.1215/00104124-3698517 The Ethnic Avant-Garde: Minority Cultures and World Revolution. By Steven S. Lee. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. 285 p. Midway through The Ethnic Avant-Garde, Steven Lee tells the story of Paul Robeson's 1949 visit to the Soviet Union, during which he saw his old friend Itzik Feffer, a Soviet Jewish writer caught up in Stalin's postwar anti-Semitic purges. Seeking to persuade Robeson that Feffer was safe, Soviet officials sent him to Robeson's bugged hotel room, but using gestures and scribbled notes Feffer was able to communicate the fact of his imprisonment and likely execution. While Robeson protested this by singing Yiddish songs at a Leningrad concert soon after -- a jab at Stalinist orthodoxy at a moment when Yiddish periodicals, schools, and book publications were being liquidated or discontinued -- he denied the existence of Soviet anti-Semitism on his return to the United States, "maintaining the party line over all other considerations" (178). In many ways this incident outlines the ambitions, the obstacles, and what Lee calls the "revolutionary pathos" of the book as a whole. It registers the enduring role that a utopian excitement about the Soviet Union played in the politics and culture

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Comparative Literature – Duke University Press

Published: Dec 1, 2016

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