This article examines Georg Lukács’ The Historical Novel (1937–8) and four works on the novel written by Mikhail Bakhtin between 1936 and 1941 in relation to the Great Terror and Soviet socialist realism. It argues that, to a large extent, Lukács’ and Bakhtin’s theories of the novel of the 1930s stemmed from a moral urgency felt and shared by the authors to salvage the novel – a category that has significant implications for history for both theorists – from the damages wrought by socialist realism. Focusing on the ways in which Bakhtin and Lukács encode their dissent into legitimate narratives, the article draws attention to the art of cunning – dissimulation, equivocation, doublespeak and coding – as a means of disrupting tyrannical discourse, registering difference and surviving. Both Lukács and Bakhtin held ambiguous views on socialist realism and both of them capitalized on the ambivalence inherent in official Soviet discourse.
AdornoT (2007 [1977]) Reconciliation under duress, trans. LivingstoneR. In: Aesthetics and Politics: Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, and Georg Lukács. London: Verso, pp. 151–76.
2.
BakhtinMM (1981) The Dialogic Imagination, ed. HolquistM, trans. EmersonCHolquistM. Austin: University of Texas Press.
3.
BakhtinMM (1984a [1940]) Rabelais and his World, trans. IswolskyH. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
4.
BakhtinMM (1984b) Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. and trans. EmersonC. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
5.
BakhtinMM (1986) Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, ed. EmersonCHolquistM, trans. McGeeVW. Austin: University of Texas Press.
6.
BenjaminW (1985) Moscow diary. October35: 9–135.
7.
BewesTHallT (eds) (2011) Georg Lukács: The Fundamental Dissonance of Existence: Aesthetics, Politics, Literature. London: Continuum.
ClarkK (1981) The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
10.
ClarkKHolquistM (1984) Mikhail Bakhtin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
11.
ClarkKTihanovG (2011) Soviet literary theory in the 1930s: battles over genre and the boundaries of modernity. In: TihanovGDobrenkoE (eds) A History of Russian Literary Theory and Criticism: The Soviet Age and Beyond. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 109–43.
12.
EilandHJenningsM (eds) (2006) Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, vol. 3: 1935–1938. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
13.
EngelsFMarxK (1976) Marx and Engels on Literature and Art. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
14.
EmersonC (2002) Bakhtin after the boom: pro and contra. Journal of European Studies32: 3–26.
15.
EmersonC (2016) Creative ways of not liking Bakhtin: Lydia Ginzburg and Mikhail Gasparov. Bakhtiniana: Revista de Estudos do Discurso11(1) (on-line).
16.
EstyJLyeC (eds) (2012) Peripheral Realisms Now. Special issue of Modern Language Quarterly73(3).
17.
FloydK (2009) The Reification of Desire: Toward a Queer Marxism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
18.
GasparovM (1982) Michail Bachtins Stellung in der russischen Kultur des 20. Jahrhunderts. In: LachmannR (ed.) Dialogizität. Munich: Fink.
19.
GoetheJW (1902–7 [1797]) Sämtliche Werke, vol. 36, ed. von der HellenE, et al. Jubiläums-Ausgabe: Stuttgart.
20.
GorkyM (1932–3) Po Soiuzu Sovetov. In: GorkyM., Sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (1949–55)vol. XVII. Gosudarstvennoe izdatelʹstvo khudozhestvennoĭ literatury: Moscow.
21.
GünterH (1984) Die Verstaatlichung der Literatur. Entstehung und Funktionsweise des sozialistisch-realistischen Kanons in der sowjetischen Literatur der 30er Jahre. Stuttgart: Metzler.
22.
GünterH (2011) Soviet literary criticism and the formulation of the aesthetics of socialist realism, 1932–1940. In: TihanovGDobrenkoE (eds) A History of Russian Literary Theory and Criticism: The Soviet Age and Beyond. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 90–108.
23.
HegelGWF (1956) The Philosophy of History, trans. SibreeJ. New York: Dover.
24.
HegelGWF (1975) Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, vol. II, trans. KnoxTM. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
25.
HerderJG (1968 [1784–91]) Reflections on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind, trans. ChurchillW. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
26.
HohendahlPU (2011) The theory of the novel and the concept of realism in Lukács and Adorno. In: ThompsonMJ (ed.) Georg Lukács Reconsidered: Critical Essays in Philosophy, Politics, and Aesthetics. London: Continuum, pp. 75–98.
27.
HolquistM (1984) Prologue. In: BakhtinM, Rabelais and his World, trans. IswolskyH.Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. vii–xii.
28.
HolquistM (1986) Introduction. In: M Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, ed. EmersonCHolquistM, trans. McGeeVW. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. ix–xxiii.
29.
HolquistM (1990) Dialogism: Bakhtin and his World. London: Routledge.
30.
JayM (2018) Fidelity to the event? Lukács’ History and Class Consciousness and the Russian Revolution. Study of East European Thought70: 195–213.
31.
KadarkayA (1991) Georg Lukács: Life, Thought and Politics. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishing.
32.
KafkaF (1971) The Complete Stories, ed. GlatzerNN. New York: Schocken Books.
33.
LevantA (2008) The Soviet Union in Ruins. Saarbrucken: VDM Verlag.
34.
LöwyM (2007 [1975]) Lukács and Stalinism. In: Aesthetics and Politics: Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, and Georg Lukács. London: Verso, pp. 193–213.
35.
LudzP (ed.) (1967) Georg Lukács, Schriften zur Ideologie und Politik. Luchterhand: Neuwied, pp. 733–4.
36.
LukácsG (1936) Essay on the novel, trans. KoganSD. International LiteratureMay: 68–74.
37.
LukácsG (1937) Literaturnye teorii XIX veka i Marksizm. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury.
38.
LukácsG (1939) K istorii realizma. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury.
39.
LukácsG (1968 [1935]) Hölderlin’s Hyperion. In: Goethe and His Age, trans. AnchorR. London: Merlin Press.
40.
LukácsG (1969) The Historical Novel, trans. MitchellH and S. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
41.
LukácsG (1970) Writer and Critic, and Other Essays, ed. and trans. KhanA. London: Merlin Press.
42.
LukácsG (1971 [1914–15]) The Theory of the Novel, trans. BostockA. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
43.
LukácsG (2018 [1956]) Der Kampf des Fortshritts und der Reaktion in der heutigen Kultur. Marxismus und Stalinismus: Politische Aufsätze. Hamburg: Rowohlt Repertoire.
44.
ManPD (1966) Georg Lukács’ theory of the novel. MLN81(5): 526–34.
45.
MarxK (1906) Capital, vol. 1, trans. AvelingEMooreS. New York: Modern Library.
46.
MorsonGSEmersonC (1990) Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.
47.
Plato (1996) The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 3, trans. AllenRE. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
48.
RosenM (1999) On Voluntary Servitude: False Consciousness and the Theory of Ideology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
49.
Salton-CoxG (2017) ‘Polemics pertinent at the time of publication’: Georg Lukács, international literature, and the Popular Front. Twentieth Century Communism12: 143–68.
ShklovskiiV (1939) Review of Georg Lukács’ bookThe Historical Novel. Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts, fond 562, series I, box 126, II. 1–8.
52.
ShneyderV (2013) On the Hegelian roots of Lukács’ theory of realism. Study of East European Thought65: 259–69.
53.
StalinJ (1967) Sochineniia, vol. I (XIV) ed. McNealRH. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
54.
TaylorC (1975) Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
55.
TihanovG (2000a) The Master and the Slave: Lukács, Bakhtin, and the Ideas of their Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
56.
TihanovG (2000b) Viktor Shklovskii and Georg Lukács in the 1930s. Slavonic and East European Review78(1): 44–65.
57.
TodorovT (1984) Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle, trans. GodzichW. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
58.
TodorovT (1987) Literature and its Theorists: A Personal View of Twentieth-Century Criticism, trans. PorterC. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
59.
ZhdanovA (1934) Soviet literature – the richest in idea, the most advanced literature. In: ScottHG (ed.) Problems of Soviet Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, pp. 15–26.
60.
ZimaP (2003) Bakhtin’s Young Hegelian aesthetics. In: GardinerME (ed.) Mikhail Bakhtin, vol. II. London: SAGE, pp. 14–28.
