Language:
English
Year of publication:
1996
Titel der Quelle:
PMLA
Angaben zur Quelle:
111,2 (1996) 240-255
Keywords:
Rybakov, Anatoliĭ,
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature
;
Russian literature History and criticism
;
Jewish literature History and criticism
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Abstract:
Criticizes the novel "Tyazholyi pesok" (1978), by the Soviet Jewish writer (b. 1911) - the first novel on the Holocaust published through official Soviet channels. Rybakov was impelled by contradictory motives: on the one hand, he wanted to memorialize Jewish life and death in a 20th-century Ukrainian village, and to break the negative stereotype of the Jew in Russian literature; on the other hand, he did not want to challenge the Soviet literary norm, and wanted to remain in the framework of "socialist realism." Therefore, he tried to de-Judaize his heroes, to stress their Russianness, as if Jewishness belongs to the world of the past; his ideal is assimilation. Trying to integrate Jews in Russia, Rybakov represents, in fact, not the Jewish Holocaust, but a page of the Soviet tragedy.
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