ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the translation and commissioning trajectories of liberal Russian authors Ludmila Ulitskaya, Vladimir Sorokin, and Mikhail Shishkin, revealing how dissident status operates as cultural capital in the Russian-English literary translation field. Through case studies of The Big Green Tent, Day of the Oprichnik, and Maidenhair, it analyses the networks linking translators, editors, and agents whose symbolic capital shapes which Russian novels are published in English. By creating publishing microhistories around each of these translations, the chapter argues that the politics of dissidence confer prestige on both authors and their mediators. This preference for liberal writers exemplifies how political alignment becomes a marketable form of symbolic capital.
