ABSTRACT
The longstanding premises of Soviet ideology is that the Party’s nationality policy is leading to the “flourishing” of the national cultures of all the Soviet peoples. They accentuate the positive role that the state has played in encouraging the development of national cultures while downplaying its negative or suppressive role. The creative leeway granted to writers in the non-Russian regions during the Brezhnev years tended to depend on the leadership of the cultural bureaucracy and artistic unions in the given republic, and whether the individuals in charge were sympathetic to efforts to reinvigorate the national culture. Especially Russian critics like Lakshin, were quick to look for weaknesses in the work, and treated it as a contribution to the inter-nationalist Soviet literature—as distinct from Russian literature. The publication of the novel encouraged others to raise similar issues in their writings and in discussions of the agenda for Soviet literature in the late 1980s and the 1990s.
