[Newmag Summer Fest] Galina Yuzifovich: What are the main challenges of the post-Soviet literary world? (video)

As it was in the case of British colonies, the Soviet countries as well had similar literary taste, people were reading the same writers, their demands were quite similar. However, everything changed in the post-Soviet period. Different preferences and literary tastes emerged among those nations. Galina Yuzifovich notices that each of these countries has its own topics of interests, favorite writers and genres. She believes that over a period of time the impact of Soviet legacy was drastically reduced and the post-Soviet cultural ties between those countries were weakened as well. “There is a certain thing I don’t really like in the case of post-Soviet countries. For instance, the British colony is always supportive of writers from other countries who write in English. That is how they develop the English language literature. This is sadly not the case in the post-Soviet countries.”

Yuzifovich believes that there is a lack of institutional work in Russia on this matter. It would be more effective to gather those post-Soviet countries under one cultural platform. “Our literature also depends on Vladimir Putin’s politics and how he is perceived at a given period of time. Currently, the international community is not very pleased with him, that is why Russian literature is in a vulnerable position in world literature.”

Yuzifovich claims that another challenge for Russian literature is that Russians have the false perception that they don’t need to make efforts in order to make Russian literature popular in the world. “It is a common notion in the world: You need to spend money on translation. We don’t really consider this to be an effective tool, that is why our literature is not popular in international markets. Besides that, our literature is too Russian, our authors write their literary pieces only for the Russian reader.”

Modern literature has undergone serious changes. Previously, the issues were common and universal, currently the challenges and the success story are individual. “While speaking about Russian-language books written during the Soviet time, it should be noted that the problems were more universal at that time. Nowadays, the main focus of literary works is the individual.”

Galina Yuzifovich believes that in our days literary awards are outdated. The only real problem that those awards solve is that they provide some money as an incentive. “Literary award as an institution and a literary award was established when people were reading the same thing. Thus, the literary award should have chosen the best author. It’s not the case anymore. Nowadays we read our compatriot writers.”

The literary critic believes that there are numerous famous contemporary writers, who put lots of time and effort in their literary works. Those works need to be translated and spread around the world.