[CANCELLED] Guest Lecture: “The Writers, Socialist Realism, and Nation Building in Soviet Moldavia under Stalinism”

Note: This talk had to be cancelled owing to visa problems. In the event that Professor Negura visits the Triangle area later this year, we will try to schedule another presentation.

CSEEES is delighted to host a guest lecture by Petru Negură, a lecturer at the Ion Creangă State Pedagogical University in Chisinau, on “The Writers, Socialist Realism, and Nation Building in Soviet Moldavia under Stalinism”

‣ Talk description

This talk will focus on the social and political background to the production of Moldovan literature in the Stalin era. Moldovan writers were tasked with adapting a foreign literary model, Socialist Realism, to the local cultural context. Moreover, from the creation of the first literary organization of the Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR) in 1928, until de-Stalinization and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, one of the main jobs of Soviet Moldovan writers and “creative intellectuals” more generally, was to create a system of cultural values (around an allegedly distinct literary language and the invention of a local cultural heritage) which would legitimate the existence of a Moldovan “socialist nation.” These tasks imposed by the Soviet regime generated certain tensions and compromises among the writers themselves (and the various groups in the Moldovan Writers’ Union); between the writers and the representatives of Soviet power (both central and local); and with regard to the target audience for their literary production.

‣ Bio

Petru Negură teaches at the Ion Creangă State Pedagogical University in Chisinau. He studied at the Al. I. Cuza University in Iaşi (1991-1996), and in 1999-2000 he attended the Doctoral School in Social Sciences in Bucharest. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) in 2007 with a thesis entitled „National in Form, Socialist in Content: Literature, Politics, and Society in Romanian Bessarabia and Soviet Moldavia during the Stalin era.” He has authored dozens of academic journal articles. His book Ni héros, ni traîtres: Les écrivains moldaves face au pouvoir soviétique sous Staline (Paris:  L’Harmattan, 2009), was published in Romanian at Editura Cartier, Chisinau last year.