Reinventing Tradition - (Jews of Russia & Eastern Europe and Their Legacy) by Klavdia Smola (Hardcover)

About the Book

Klavdia Smola explores how the Jewish tradition was reinvented in Russian-Jewish literature after a long period of assimilation, the Holocaust and decades of Communism. The process of reinventing the tradition began in the counter-culture of Jewish dissidents, in the midst of the late-Soviet underground of the 1960-1970s, and it continues to the present day.

Book Synopsis

Klavdia Smola explores how the Jewish tradition was reinvented in Russian-Jewish literature after a long period of assimilation, the Holocaust and decades of Communism. The process of reinventing the tradition began in the counter-culture of Jewish dissidents, in the midst of the late-Soviet underground of the 1960-1970s, and it continues to the present day.

Review Quotes

"Readers ... will find a clear and insightful survey of contemporary works in Russian on Jewish themes. Smola's study is innovative in its focus on the Jewish revival in the late Soviet period and subsequent works written in Israel, Germany, France and the United States (as well as Russia) following mass migration."

- Ann Komaromi, The Slavonic and East European Review

"[T]his book is analytically rich, thus opening a lot of doors for the enquiring reader...Klavdia Smola's book represents an excellent resource for the academic library."

-- Dr John Cook, Australian Slavonic and East European Studies

"The reader, thanks to the author's deep dive into the literary works she brings forward to make her case, will come away from this book with a recognition and appreciation of the work of a number of well-regarded (although not widely known) authors, whether resident in Russia, Israel, the US or elsewhere, concerned with Jewish identity as shaped and perceived through Soviet and Russian experience. ... Reinventing Tradition is a distinguished contribution to the understanding of this revitalization and rediscovery, looking to make the search by Soviet and Russian Jewish authors more widely known and a source of insight and wisdom to be brought near."

-- Mindy C. Reiser, AJL News & Reviews

"It is well known that a driving force for the formation of underground cultures in former republics of the USSR was the national revival. In her excellent monograph, Klavdia Smola, a prominent scholar of the Soviet nonconformism, focuses on underground literature born by Jewish national revival--a decentralized process that engaged Jews from all republics and regions of the Soviet Union. She meticulously reconstructs a cultural dimension of the political movement for Jewish immigration from the USSR and through the analysis of Russophone Jewish underground literature, traces the development of its main myths and discourses, from their emergence in the 1960s prose of exodus to their ironic deconstructions in postmodernist writings of the 1980s-90s and essentialization in neo-Zionist narratives in the 2000s. This book will be invaluable not only for students of Jewish cultural history but also in courses on national revival in the late Soviet Union and on Russophone literature as a growing new field of studies. Klavdia Smola's book is pioneering in all these directions."

-- Mark Lipovetsky, Columbia University

"Klavdia Smola's superbly researched and deeply illuminating book is a must have for anyone interested in the pathways of Jewish creativity in Russian during the late Soviet and post-Soviet epochs. Especially noteworthy are Smola's intricate readings of the little known writers who were part of the underground scene in the Soviet Union and later immigrated to Israel. With its breadth of the material covered and innovative theoretical approaches, Smola's volume makes an invaluable contribution to the study of Russian Jewish literature and culture."

-- Marat Grinberg, Professor of Russian and Humanities, Reed College, Author of The Soviet Jewish Bookshelf: Jewish Culture and Identity between the Lines

"The course of Russian-Jewish literature never did run smooth: not when most Russian-s

About the Author

Klavdia Smola is Professor and Chair of Slavic Literatures at the University of Dresden. She (co-)edited among others The Oxford Handbook of Soviet Underground Culture (2022); (Multi)national Faces of Socialist Realism: Beyond the Russian Literary Canon (special issue of Slavic Review, 2022), and Russia - Culture of (Non-)Conformity: From the Late Soviet Era to the Present (special issue of Russian Literature, 2018).