Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Roar, China!

Sino-Soviet creative convergence
by
June 2022, no. 443

Internationalist Aesthetics: China and early Soviet culture by Edward Tyerman

Columbia University Press, US$35 pb, 353 pp

Roar, China!

Sino-Soviet creative convergence
by
June 2022, no. 443
A gathering at the apartment of Mayakovsky and Brikov in Sokolniki, 1925. Standing (left to right): Mayakovsky, Osip Brik, Boris Pasternak, Sergei Tretyakov, Viktor Shklovsky, Lev Grinkrug, O.M. Beskin, P.V. Neznamov. Sitting: Elsa Triolet, Lilya Brik, R.S. Kushner, E.V. Pasternak, Olga Tretyakova. (photograph from Maïakovski by Elsa Triolet (1939)/Wikimedia Commons)
A gathering at the apartment of Mayakovsky and Brikov in Sokolniki, 1925. Standing (left to right): Mayakovsky, Osip Brik, Boris Pasternak, Sergei Tretyakov, Viktor Shklovsky, Lev Grinkrug, O.M. Beskin, P.V. Neznamov. Sitting: Elsa Triolet, Lilya Brik, R.S. Kushner, E.V. Pasternak, Olga Tretyakova. (photograph from Maïakovski by Elsa Triolet (1939)/Wikimedia Commons)

‘We are drawn to this China, even though we still do not know China,’ wrote Soviet avant-garde writer and theorist Sergei Tretyakov in 1925. ‘But we must get to know China, we must get to know it well, and we must get to know it quickly.’ Tretyakov’s call was underpinned by a real sense of political urgency: the failure of socialist revolutions across Europe had prompted a Soviet pivot toward Asia, and China had emerged as a potential partner for fostering ‘an international community of enemies of capital’. Yet despite being geographically adjacent, Russia and China had long perceived each other as unfamiliar and distant. In an effort to bridge this divide, a comprehensive cultural campaign was devised to draw China closer to the Soviet public.

Iva Glisic reviews 'Internationalist Aesthetics: China and early Soviet culture' by Edward Tyerman

Internationalist Aesthetics: China and early Soviet culture

by Edward Tyerman

Columbia University Press, US$35 pb, 353 pp

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.