This volume brings together articles written by experts in the literary history of Central and Eastern European literatures. The overarching topic is the export of Socialist Realism into Europe after WWII, but the authors are interested not so much in highlighting the generalised, top-down mechanism of the project, as in the particularities of each specific national and cultural context. Research shows that in practice the introduction of the Soviet cultural model was not quite the smooth endeavour that it was intended to be; rather, it was always a work in progress, often born out of a give-and-take with the local authorities, intellectuals and interest groups. Those in charge negotiated the precarious terrain of local cultural and political controversies, caught between tradition and innovation in some countries, or, in others, between a sincere interest in the new concept of art and a complete refusal to accept new rules. Paradoxically, among all the different experiences of introducing, importing imposing Socialist Realism in the specific national contexts, the one thing in common is that each case was a response to the local conditions, a process of working through the challenge of inscribing a staunch theory into the daily reality of an unfamiliar country, language and culture.

Acknowledgements; Introduction, Evgeny Dobrenko and Natalia Jonsson- Skradol; Part 1. INSTITUTIONS; Chapter One How Socialist Realism Was Exported to Eastern European Countries and How They Got Rid of It, Hans Günther; Chapter Two Literary Monopolists and the Forging of the Post- World War II People's Republic of Letters, Rossen Djagalov; Chapter Three Once Dr Faul Has Left: The Agony of Socialist Realism in Poland, 1955- 56, Evgeny Dobrenko; Chapter Four From Literature Censored by Poets to Literature Censored by the Party: Censorship in the Czech Literary Culture of 1945- 55, Pavel Jan á c ek; Chapter Five The Demise of 'Socialist Realism for Export' in 1947: VOKS Receives John Steinbeck and Robert Capa, Vladislav M. Zubok; Chapter Six The Soviet Factor and the Institutionalization of Bulgarian Literature after World War II, Tatiana V. Volokitina; Chapter Seven Cultural Renewal in Eastern Germany - Mission Impossible for Soviet Cultural Offi cers and German Anti- Fascists?, Anne Hartmann; Part 2. DYNAMICS; Chapter Eight Socialist Writers and Intellectuals in a Divided Nation: The Early GDR Experience, Helen Fehervary; Chapter Nine Stalinism's Imperial Figure: Hero or Clerk of the Pax Sovietica ?, Benjamin Robinson; Chapter Ten From Avant- Garde to Socialist Realism: Continuities and Discontinuities in Hungarian and Romanian Literature, Imre J ó zsef Bal á zs; Chapter Eleven The Short Life of Socialist Realism in Croatian Literature, 1945- 55, Ivana Peru S ko; Chapter Twelve Literature in Socialist Yugoslavia: Constructing Collective Memory, Institutionalizing the Cultural Field, David Norris; Chapter Thirteen 'Yesterday and Tomorrow': The Forms of the Slovak Literature of Socialist Realism, 1945- 56, René Bílik; Chapter Fourteen Socialist or Realist: The Poetics of Politics in Sovietized Hungary, Melinda Kalmár; Part 3. DISCOURSES; Chapter Fifteen Introducing Socialist Realism in Hungary, 1945- 51: How Politics Made Aesthetics, Tam á s Scheibner; Chapter Sixteen When Writers Turn against Themselves: The Soviet Model and the Bulgarian Experience, 1946- 56, Plamen Doinov; Chapter Seventeen Big Brother's Gravity: East European Literature in the Mirror of Soviet 'Thick Journals' in the Late 1940s, Evgeny Ponomarev; Chapter Eighteen The Coming One: Prolegomena to the Positive Hero of Czech Socialist Realism as a Transforming and Transformed Subject Vít Schmarc; Chapter Nineteen Will Freedom Sing as Beautifully as Captives Sang about It? Reshaping the Croatian Canon, 1945- 55, Nenad Ivic; Chapter Twenty The Salon in the Camp: Friendship Societies and the Literary Public Sphere in the SBZ and Early GDR, Natalia Jonsson- Skradol; Conclusion, Evgeny Dobrenko and Natalia Jonsson- Skradol; List of Contributors; Index.