Gulag translations and Cold War antinomies: Notes for a reflexive Translation Studies

Stridon. 2021. Vol. 1. No. 1. P. 9–32.

Baer B. J.

This article examines the phenomenon of Gulag translations, or translations done by incarcerated

political prisoners in the Soviet Union, and the discourse surrounding it in order to think past the

traditional binary of official/dissident that has dominated western scholarship on communist culture

for decades. Understanding the discursive overlap of official and non-official or intelligentsia

discourse regarding Gulag translations suggests shared values and shared views on translation as

noble, self-sacrificing work. This is not to say that the intelligentsia were necessarily mimicking official

rhetoric but, more probably, that both official and intelligentsia discourse fed from a common

discursive repertoire developed in the nineteenth century. The article highlights the need to evaluate

translations and translation thinking within the specific socio-cultural context that produced it

and in which it circulates.

Keywords: перевод, translation history, Холодная война, переводоведение в России, Soviet translation theory, Cold War historiography