Reviews for Burden of Dreams

The average rating for Burden of Dreams based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-08-06 00:00:00 Paul Hayden p.75 - The inflation in Germany made Berlin the first and most active center of émigré publishing between 1920 and 1923. A further factor in favor of the German capital was the presence of a large number of Russian refugees with a professional and intellectual background, who provided both a ready pool of authors and a market for the many publishing houses. Finally, since Germany's flirtation with the Bolshevik government, Berlin had the best contacts with Soviet Russia; with the start of the New Economic Policy, Soviet citizens who could obtain permission to travel came to Berlin. p.76 - Indeed thanks to Berlin's role as center of Russian publishing, upon conclusion of the civil war Many Soviet writers travelled abroad - a few stayed for good. Other made temporary visits, for example L. Pasternak, M. Gershenzon, A. Tolstoi, and I. Erenburg. Those who never returned to Russia are too numerous to be listed, especially if we include those who were expelled from Soviet Russia in 1922. A. Remizov, V. Khodasevich, N. Berberova, M. Tsvetaeva were among the best-known littérateurs who visited Berlin. In the early 1920s V. Mayakovsky, S. Esenin, A. Belyi, and M. Gorky (whostayed abroad until the late 1920s) also came through Berlin. In this way, a modernistic strain was infused into the intellectual climate of the emigration. The modernistic impact was reinforced by painters, musicians, and dramatic artists who pursued the experimental aspects of contemporary Russian art and who visited Berlin. The first exhibition of contemporary Russian art was held in 1922. This point about modernism is significant because, by and large, the writers in emigration belonged to the older naturalist and symbolist schools - I. Bunin and A. Kuprin to the former and Z. Hippius and D. Merezhkovsky to the latter - while the established intellectuals in exile, although friendly to the new trends in philosophy and religion, tended to be conservative in their aesthetics and viewed with much skepticism the modernistic experiments in Russia on the eve and after 1917. Émigré poetry proved more innovative and experimental than émigré prose. The younger poets in exile were interested in the new movements of the twenties and eagerly absorbed what the writers, and especially the poets, coming from Bolshevik Russia had to teach them. In this way Berlin helped to make Russian modernism known in the outside world.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-02-10 00:00:00 Timothy Sheridan Very good, easy-to-read selection of essays that portrays Stalinism as an evolution of sovietism, rather than a throwback to neo-victorian values. The sections on family values, sexuality, and cultural unity are most interesting.