Sovetskaia mnogonatsional’naia literatura kak imperskii proekt i kak vyzov imperii

Soviet multinational literature was an imperial project. However, institutionally, ideologically, and aesthetically, it produced a non- and even anti-imperial space. It developed as a byproduct but turned out to be perhaps the only available platform and domain for the formation of national consciousness on the imperial outskirts of the USSR. If an anti-colonial national discourse was cultivated in the Soviet republics, then in Moscow an internationalist discourse was officially transmitted and supported, dominated by the ideas of national diversity, “interaction and mutual enrichment.” The article examines these processes at the level of institutions, the discourse that shaped them and the aesthetic practices they generated.