H.G. Wells and All Things Russian

Description

A study of Wells’s interest in Russian culture and development and the influence of his work on Russia and the Soviet Union

‘H. G. Wells and All Things Russian' is a fertile terrain for research and discussion and this volume will be the first to devote itself entirely to the theme. Wells was an astute student of Russian literature, culture and history, and Russians, in turn, became eager students of Wells’s views and works (Yuly Kagarlitsky, a Soviet biographer of Wells, called him ‘a one-man think tank’). During the Soviet years, in fact, no ‘big’ foreign author was safer for Soviet critics to praise than H. G. Wells. The reason was obvious. He had met – and approved of – Lenin, was a close friend of the Soviet literary giant Maxim Gorky and, in general, expressed much respect for Russia’s evolving Communist experiment, even after it fell into Stalin’s hands.

Wells’s views on the Soviet Union were often more complex than Soviet critics gave him credit for, but their whitewashing only served to secure his position as a sympathetic man of letters from the capitalist world. On the other hand, those who discerned his nuanced position towards totalitarian regimes, including the dystopian writer Evgeny Zamyatin, the author of an early Soviet study of Wells, found him to be a soulmate and an influence of a different kind, which worked to increase the English author’s popularity among those segments of the Russian reading public for whom his relationships with Lenin and Gorky meant very little.

Introduction: ‘The Wells Effect’, Galya Diment; WELLS IN RUSSIA PRE-WORLD WAR II; 1. Yevgeny Zamyatin and the Wellsian Utopia, Maxim Shadurski; 2. Time Machines and Metamorphoses: H. G. Wells’s Influence on Mikhail Bulgakov and Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Muireann Maguire; 3. ‘The Wellsian Twist’ in Nabokov’s ‘Terra Incognita’, Zoran Kuzmanovich; POST WORLD WAR II; 4. ‘Unregenerate Mass Nature’ in H. G. Wells and the Brothers Strugatsky, Richard Boyechko; 5. Culturology: Yuly Kagarlitsky’s Life of Wells, Patrick Parrinder; 6. ‘Come and Visit Us in Ten Years’ Time!’: Representation of H. G. Wells on the Russian Stage and Screen, Olga Sobolev and Angus Wrenn; RUSSIA IN WELLS; 7. Russia and H. G. Wells’s ‘Babes in the Darkling Wood’, David Rampton; 8. Wells and Gorky, Ira Nadel; 9. Odette Keun versus H. G. Wells on Russia, Galya Diment; Appendix. Translations; 1. V. D. Nabokov on Visiting Wells in England in 1916 (trans. Galya Diment); 2. Alexander Amfiteatrov on Wells’s Visit to Russia in 1920 (trans. Veronica Muskheli); 3. Alexander Belyaev on the Wells-Lenin debate about ‘Utopias’ (trans. Galya Diment); 4. Karl Radek and Solomon Lozovsky to Stalin (trans. Galya Diment); 5. Yury Olesha on His Love for Wells (trans. Galya Diment); 6. Yuly Kagarlitsky on Being a Soviet Biographer of Wells (trans. Veronica Muskheli); Bibliography; Index.

Sujets

• Modern history
• Literary criticism
• 20th century
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 26 juillet 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781783089932
• Langue: English

Extrait

H. G. Wells and All Things Russian
H. G. Wells and All Things Russian
Edited by Galya Diment
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2019
by ANTHEM PRESS
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or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
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© 2019 Galya Diment editorial matter and selection; individual chapters © individual contributors
The moral right of the authors has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-991-8 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78308-991-1 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
In memory of Catherine Stoye (1929–2012), H. G. Wells’s granddaughter and keeper of precious archives, whose friendship and support were tremendous gifts to me when I was working on my Koteliansky book. A fiercely private person, just like her mother, Marjorie Wells, she was nevertheless a strong believer in allowing personal letters and diaries, warts and all, to serve as important historical and cultural documents.
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of Contributors
A Note on Transliteration
Introduction: “The Wells Effect” Galya Diment
Part One WELLS IN RUSSIA
PRE-WORLD WAR II
Chapter One
Yevgeny Zamyatin and the Wellsian Utopia Maxim Shadurski
Chapter Two
Time Machines and Metamorphoses: H. G. Wells’s Influence on Mikhail Bulgakov and Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky Muireann Maguire
Chapter Three
“The Wellsian Twist” in Nabokov’s “Terra Incognita” Zoran Kuzmanovich
Part Two WELLS IN RUSSIA
POST-WORLD WAR II
Chapter Four
“Unregenerate Mass Nature” in H. G. Wells and the Brothers Strugatsky Richard Boyechko
Chapter Five
Culturology: Yuly Kagarlitsky’s Life of Wells Patrick Parrinder
Chapter Six
“Come and Visit Us in Ten Years’ Time!”: Representation of H. G. Wells on the Russian Stage and Screen Olga Sobolev and Angus Wrenn
Part Three RUSSIA IN WELLS
Chapter Seven
Present Tense Arguments: Russia and H. G. Wells’s Babes in the Darkling Wood David Rampton
Chapter Eight
Wells and Gorky Ira Nadel
Chapter Nine
Odette Keun Versus H. G. Wells on Russia Galya Diment
APPENDIX  TRANSLATIONS
1. V. D. Nabokov on Visiting H. G. Wells in England in 1916 (From Iz voiuiushchei Anglii, 41–51) (Trans. Galya Diment)
2. Alexander Amfiteatrov on Wells’s 1920 Visit to Russia (Trans. Veronica Muskheli)
3. Alexander Belyaev on the Wells-Lenin Debate about “Utopias” (Trans. Galya Diment)
4. Karl Radek and Solomon Lozovsky to Stalin (Trans. Galya Diment)
5. Yury Olesha on His Love for H. G. Wells (In Literaturnyi Kritik 12 (1935), 156– 7) (Trans. Galya Diment)
6. Yuly Kagarlitsky on Being a Soviet Biographer of Wells (Trans. Veronica Muskheli)
Bibliography
Wells, Herbert George – Works Index
General Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
1 Russian 1920 edition of The Time Machine
2 Russian 1921 edition of Russia in the Shadows
3 Russian 1928 edition of The War of the Worlds
4 H. G. Wells and Maxim Gorky in 1920 in Moscow, with a statuette of Leo Tolstoy that Gorky presented to Wells
5 Lenin and Wells in Moscow, 1920, discussing Lenin’s plan for the electrification of all of Russia
6 Evgeny Zamyatin in the1920s
7 Zamyatin’s 1922 study of Wells
8 Alexander Belyaev in the1930s
9 Belyaev’s 1925 novel The Head of Professor Dowell
10 Odette Keun’s book about her experience in Soviet Russia that led to her meeting Wells
11 Stalin and Gorky in the 1930s
12 The 1933 poster by Boris Efimov with Stalin at the rudder which declares: “The captain of the country of the Soviets leads us from victory to victory”
13 Wells, his son George Phillip (Gip) in Moscow in 1934, with Betty Glan, the Director of the Gorky Central Park of Culture and Recreation
14 Wells with Soviet journalists in Moscow in 1934
15 Yuly Kagarlitsky, the Soviet biographer of Wells
6.1 H. G. Wells (Sergei Tsenin), Light upon Russia (1947)
6.2 H. G. Wells (Sergei Tsenin) in conversation with Lenin, Light upon Russia (1947)
6.3 Right to left : H. G. Wells (Harijs Lipinsh), Sam – American photo-reporter (Anatolii Kryzhansky), Anton Zabelin – eminent Russian hydroelectric engineer (Boris Livanov), The Chimes of the Kremlin (1970)
6.4 H. G. Wells (Mark Prudkin) and Lenin (Boris Smirnov), the MAT’s production of The Chimes of the Kremlin (1967)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For the Russian materials we are indebted to Wellsians, archivists, and librarians in Moscow and St. Petersburg: Alexander Orlov, Elena Chibisova, Olga Arsentieva, Yulia Sycheva, and Lidya Petrova. I am also grateful to my colleague at the University of Washington, Professor José Alaniz, himself a specialist in Soviet science fiction, who continued his role as Richard Boyechko’s academic advisor by giving him valuable suggestions and making editorial comments on the drafts of his article for this volume.
CONTRIBUTORS

Richard Boyechko is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Washington, Seattle. His dissertation explores the role that subways play in the public imagination of modernity in Russia and China by considering their portrayal in contemporary cultural productions, particularly in science fiction.
Galya Diment is Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor in the Humanities who teaches in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and is Affiliate Professor in Jewish Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. She was Joff Hanauer Distinguished Professor in Western Civilization, 2015–18. She is the author of three books, including A Russian Jew of Bloomsbury: The Life and Times of Samuel Koteliansky (2011), and edited or co-edited four more, including Katherine Mansfield and Russia (2017).
Zoran Kuzmanovich teaches Davidson College courses on American and comparative literature, literary theory, film and fragrant plants. His research focuses on the relations among ethics, politics and art. Since 1996 he has edited Nabokov Studies .
Muireann Maguire lectures in Russian literature and culture at the University of Exeter, UK. She is the author of Stalin’s Ghosts: Gothic Themes in Early Soviet Literature (2012) and is currently researching a monograph on pregnancy and childbirth narratives in Russian literature. She also translates Russian literary fiction.
Veronica Muskheli is a PhD candidate at the Slavic Languages and Literatures Department at the University of Washington, Seattle. Muskheli is also a literary translator, credited with translations of folktales and fantasy from Russian, Slovenian and Georgian into English. Her latest publication is a co-translation of the Russian science fiction writer Aleksei Lukianov’s short story “Entwives.”
Ira Nadel is professor of English at the University of British Columbia, and he publishes on modernism and biography. His titles include Joyce and the Jews , Modernism’s Second Act and lives of Leonard Cohen, Tom Stoppard, David Mamet and Leon Uris. His current work involves Anglo/Russian literary exchanges.
Patrick Parrinder is the author of Shadows of the Future (1995), Nation and Novel (2006) and Utopian Literature and Science (2015). He published his first book on H. G. Wells in 1970, and has been involved in Wells scholarship ever since. He is currently general editor of the 12-volume Oxford History of the Novel in English , and is also president of the H. G. Wells Society. He is an emeritus professor of English at the University of Reading.
David Rampton is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Ottawa. His work includes studies of Nabokov and Faulkner as well as anthologies of fiction and nonfiction. He served as chair of the department from 2002 to 2007.
Maxim Shadurski is adjunct professor of Literary Theory and Comparative Studies at Siedlce University (Poland). He holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh. His publications include two monographs and over 40 essays on utopia, nationalism and landscape. He edits The Wellsian: The Journal of the H. G. Wells Society .
Olga Sobolev lectures in Comparative Literature at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She publishes on British-Russian cultural relations including From Orientalism to Cultural Capital: The Myth of Russia in British Literature of the 1920 (2017); “Reception of Alfred Tennyson in Russia” (2016); “Alexander Blok in the Changing Russian Literary Canon” (2017); and a monograph on Shaw, with Angus Wrenn, G. B. Shaw and Russia (2012).
Angus Wrenn has taught literature at the London School of Economics since 1997. Recent publications include From Orientalism to Cultural Capital: The Myth of Russia in British Literature of the 1920 (2017); “Wagner’s Ring Cycle and Parade’s End” (2014); “Henry James’s Europe” (2012); and a monograph on Shaw, together with Olga Sobolev, G. B. Shaw and Russia (2012).
A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION
In this volume we render Russian names in English both largely in accordance with the widely u