Writing under Stalin

Elaine Feinstein and Joseph Sherman write about Jewish writers in Stalin’s Russia. In The Russian Jerusalem, her lyrical novel about history, memory and love, Feinstein concentrates on Marina Tsvetaeva and her contemporaries who had chosen to write in Russian. In From Pogrom to Purge, Sheman recounts the dramatic trial and murder in 1952 of 13 major Yiddish writers, putting an end to Yiddish culture in Russia.

Journalist, novelist, poet and playwright , Elaine Feinstein is also a Russian specialist and, among her award-winning translations and biographies, she has written about Marina Tsvetayeva and Pushkin. She has been writer-in-residence for the British Council in Singapore and Tromsoe, Norway and is a member of the Council of The Royal Society of Literature.

Joseph Sherman, Corob Fellow in Yiddish Studies, University of Oxford, is the author of a range of scholarly essays on Yiddish literature, translated into English Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel, Shadows on the Hudson.

David Mazower

In association with Academia Rossica