ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a specific translation project initiated in Moscow that came from the very center of the Soviet ideological machine, the newspaper Pravda. Producing translated "Stalinist folklore" turns out to be more complex than creating such a text in Russian because, in addition to the performer, it involves at least two more agents: the author of the interlinear trot and the translator. Texts published in the Stalinist period as examples of "contemporary folklore" have recently drawn a great deal of research attention in respect to their authenticity and relationship to oral tradition. All the preparatory material for the anthology Works of the Peoples of the USSR constitutes an important record of how exactly the "recording" of the empire's voices was carried out in Stalin's totalitarian society. The working process of the editorial board demonstrates all the tension within the Soviet project of translation from the languages of nationalities at a relatively early stage in its development.
