FOSP’S “Publishing Passion”: on the Materials Held in the Department of Manuscripts of the IWL RAS

This article based on the archival material from the Department of manuscripts ofIWL RAN discusses the hitherto understudied financial and ideological conditionsof the Publishing house of the Federation of Associations of Soviet writers (FOSP)“Federation.” According to the Charter, the Publishing house was a self-financingpublic publishing house of national significance, enjoying all the rights of a legal entity,and the FOSP was not responsible for its financial activities FOSP. In 1927–1930s, thepublishing house sought to be commercially successful. In the 1930s, it submitted toideological demands and became unprofitable. The ideological dictate and the policyof “prolitarization” led to the fact that in 1931–1932, translation department in theLeningrad branch of FOSP was eliminated and Moscow translation department waseliminated as well. The hithertop unpublished correspondence of the FOSP on the“case of A.K. Vinogradov” as a member of the Moscow section describes circumstancesand gives reasons explaining Vinogradov’s refusal to keep translating and hispreference of literary criticism and creative writing in the 1930s and 1940s.