# Communist Literature **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 20, 2012, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communist-literature/628846 "2012-07-20T13:28:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2012, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communist-literature/628846/21 "2012-07-23T03:02:41Z")
Since Stanislaw Lem was mentioned, I’ll give another SF author - the Strugatsky brothers. One of their most famous stories was “Roadside Picnic”, which was made into the movie “Stalker” (and that lately into a video game), though the movie’s rather bleaker than the book. (There was also a recent minor flap over some superficial resemblance to Avatar - they have a planet called Pandora with people known as the Nave). They commonly set their stories in a future communist utopia (in some of the same way _Star Trek_ is like that). ---
**Author:** ![Erdosain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/erdosain/32/7284_2.png) [@Erdosain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Erdosain)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2012, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communist-literature/628846/22 "2012-07-23T03:34:22Z")
Unfortunately, there are a ton of Soviet-era writers I’ve been meaning to get around to, but haven’t had time yet: [Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky](http://www.nybooks.com/books/authors/sigizmund-krzhizhanovsky/) [Andrey Platonov](http://www.nybooks.com/books/authors/andrey-platonov/) [Victor Serge](http://www.nybooks.com/books/authors/victor-serge/) ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2012, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communist-literature/628846/23 "2012-07-23T03:54:17Z")
Anything by the Strugratsky brothers - best sci-fi in Russian. From the translated-to-English works - especially “Roadside Picnic”. I am not sure how good the translations are, but the original works are outstanding. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2012, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communist-literature/628846/24 "2012-07-23T04:37:57Z")
> [@DaphneBlack](#): > > Probably my favourite book that I’ve read in the last 10 years is Vasily Grossman’s ‘Life and Fate’. Grossman’s relationship to Communism and the powers that be was a bit complex. I’m always recommending this book to people with the warning that it is really long and often very depressing, but it is an incredible work. Grossman’s reportage (he was a journalist) on the concentration camps was some of the earliest, and is incredibly devastating, as is his imagining of the battle of Stalingrad. I assume you’re aware _Life and Fate_ is the second volume of a two-book series. The first volume was _The Right Cause_. Now here’s the interesting thing. _The Right Cause_ was published in 1952, when Stalin was still alive and in power. That book was pro-Soviet. Stalin died in 1953 as Grossman was writing _Life and Fate_, which he finished in 1959. And that book had a clear anti-government message and Grossman was unable to get it published in the Soviet Union until 1988. It was published outside the Soviet Union in foreign translations. The irony is that _The Right Cause_ was never translated into English or published outside of the Soviet Union. So it would have been difficult for anyone to have read both volumes. ---
**Author:** ![Hallucinex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ba9def/32.png) [@Hallucinex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hallucinex)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2012, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communist-literature/628846/25 "2012-07-23T10:18:45Z")
> [@outlierrn](#): > > While this has pretty much nothing to do with the OP, I feel compelled to share this story with everyone who was interested enough in a thread about Soviet art to open it. > > [http://www.desertofforbiddenart.com/](http://www.desertofforbiddenart.com/) > > [Nukus Museum of Art - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nukus_Museum_of_Art) I went to that museum a couple of years ago. It was really fascinating and had a lot of quite different styles of art (both the Soviet period stuff and old and modern local stuff). A bit out of the way though, so probably off the radar for a lot of tourists (even if they do make it out as far as Khiva - though would be a good day trip from there). Don’t think there was much else of note for tourists in Nukus either, but makes a good jumping off point to visit the Aral Sea, and a good stopping point if crossing into Turkmenistan from the Konye-Urgench crossing. ---
**Author:** ![DaphneBlack](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/daphneblack/32/5389_2.png) [@DaphneBlack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaphneBlack)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2012, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communist-literature/628846/26 "2012-07-24T11:01:57Z")
More excellent suggestions. Any others? **Little Nemo** , yes, I think Grossman’s changing attitude toward the Soviets is one of the things that makes his writing so interesting. I’ve been meaning to read a collection of his journalism (the name escapes me at the moment) – I wonder how much of that trajectory will be visible there. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2012, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communist-literature/628846/27 "2012-07-24T16:59:21Z")
_[Red Plenty](http://www.amazon.com/Red-Plenty-Francis-Spufford/dp/1555976042/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343149105&sr=8-1&keywords=red+plenty)_ is about life under Communism in the Khrushchev and Brezhnev periods. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2012, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communist-literature/628846/28 "2012-07-24T17:19:21Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > Anything by the Strugratsky brothers - best sci-fi in Russian. From the translated-to-English works - especially “Roadside Picnic”. I am not sure how good the translations are, but the original works are outstanding. Isn’t _Roadside Picnic_ actually set in (some future, imaginary) Canada though? I agree that it is an excellent book, that happens to be by Soviet era Russians, but it is not clear to me that it says or is trying to say much about the Soviet Union (or Canada, come to that). ---
**Author:** ![kob09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ebca7d/32.png) [@kob09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kob09)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2012, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communist-literature/628846/29 "2012-07-24T17:26:00Z")
I liked the Dschingis Aitmatov books. I guess before typing long I simply post this? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinghiz\_Aitmatov](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinghiz_Aitmatov) in science fiction I liked the Strugatzkis too 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2012, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communist-literature/628846/30 "2012-07-24T17:28:07Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Isn’t _Roadside Picnic_ actually set in (some future, imaginary) Canada though? I agree that it is an excellent book, that happens to be by Soviet era Russians, but it is not clear to me that it says or is trying to say much about the Soviet Union (or Canada, come to that). It is set in some unspecified Western country (probably Anglophone, considering some names). The OP asked for “literature produced in the Eastern bloc under Communism”. And no matter where the setting is, Strugatsky brothers’ writing is about Soviet era Russians 🙂 It is just obfuscated more than usual in the Roadside Picnic. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2012, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communist-literature/628846/31 "2012-07-25T02:27:20Z")
An out-of-left-field suggestion. There was (is?) a Russian author named Vlas Tenin who wrote a book called _Sleep Softly, Dear Comrade_ back around 1970. It was translated into English and published under the title _Moscow Nights_ in 1973. Now, fair warning. The story is about a bunch of morally-challenged characters living on the fringe between the Soviet Union’s bureaucracy and criminal underground. One aspect of this story is the decadence of these characters as depicted by some explicit sex scenes. And it was these sex scenes which sold the book. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2012, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communist-literature/628846/32 "2012-07-25T03:22:59Z")
> [@newcomer](#): > > I’d recommend books by Milan Kundera from that period. I think, in fact, at the time he became a successful writer once he moved to France an then continued producing solid works. 😕 Kundera was successful before he moved to France, and his work hardly counts as communist literature. None of it meets the OPs requirements, I don’t think. One of his best novels, The Joke, published in (I think) 1967, heavily satirizes the communist system in Czechoslovakia. As for great communist literature, perhaps have a look at Mayakovskiy’s work, or Maksim Gorkiy. In both cases, they wrote works that they intended to serve as communist propaganda, and both writers were enthusiastic about the achievements of the revolution for large parts of their lives. Still, and this is a common pattern with Soviet writers, esp. pre-war (Pasternak too, for instance), the initial enthusiasm ended in disillusion. Mayakovskiy’s committed suicide; Gorkiy moved to Italy for quite a while until Stalin persuaded him to come back to the SU. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2012, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communist-literature/628846/33 "2012-07-25T16:57:11Z")
> [@Svejk\_1](#): > > . Oh that reminds me, [Jaroslav Hašek](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaroslav_Ha%C5%A1ek) was a Bolshevik. Although there’s not a lot of ideology in his work. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2012, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communist-literature/628846/34 "2012-07-25T18:56:37Z")
Does Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovitch” count as “communist literature”? Its the ultimate in disillusionment (with communism) by a man who desperately wants to believe in it! ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2012, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communist-literature/628846/35 "2012-07-26T17:50:49Z")
What do \*you \*think? Is Anne Frank’s Diary Nazi propaganda? Is Uncle Tom a white supremacist? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/communist-literature/628846.md?page=1)