Socialist Realism Rewrites Modernism: Dos Passos’ “The Body of an American” among Soviet Shock Workers
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46991/TSTP/2026.SI.3.147Keywords:
Soviet translation studies, Socialist realism, literary modernism, world literature, John Dos PassosAbstract
This article examines a radically rewritten Russian translation of a section of John Dos Passos’s novel 1919, published anonymously in the mass-circulation magazine Prozhektor in 1932, as a case study in the Soviet rewriting of literary modernism. The translation suppresses many of Dos Passos’ characteristic features while preserving and sharpening his critique of American capitalism. Reading the translation alongside Dos Passos’ original and the issue’s surrounding articles, I argue that the text was extensively rewritten to conform to the new ideological and stylistic priorities in Soviet literature. The article situates this episode within the broader Soviet reception of Dos Passos, a writer who drew inspiration from Soviet artistic and political developments, and whose work enjoyed a sudden popularity in the early 1930s. Drawing on André Lefevere’s concept of rewriting and an unpublished critique by the translator Igor Romanovich, I show how translation, editorial framing, and periodical context together reshaped a controversial modernist text for Soviet mass readership during the formation of socialist realism as a literary method.
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