Soviet Cinema and British Modernism - Reading Group, 24th February

The second meeting of the Anglo-Russian Research Network will be a reading group on Soviet cinema and British modernism led by Laura Marcus (Goldsmith's Professor of English Literature, New College, Oxford). The reading group - an informal, termly event that aims to bring together scholars and postgraduates with an interest in the cultural relationships between Russia and Britain in the period 1880-1950 - will be held in the Library at Pushkin House on Friday 24th February 2012 from 5.30-7.30pm. We will be looking at a selection from Bryher's Film Problems of Soviet Russia, which will be will be circulated by email in advance. Please contact Matthew Taunton and/or Rebecca Beasley if you would like to attend. All are welcome.

Inaugural Meeting

Our first meeting will take place on Friday 4 November at 5:30, at Pushkin House. Stuart Eagles, author of After Ruskin: The Social and Political Legacies of a Victorian Prophet, 1870-1920 (Oxford University Press, 2011) will introduce texts by John Kenworthy, the Tolstoyan writer, publisher and founder of the Croydon Brotherhood Church and the Purleigh Colony.  The texts will be circulated by email shortly.

If you would plan to attend the first meeting, it would be very helpful if you could email Becky Beasley (rebecca.beasley@ell.ox.ac.uk) and Matt Taunton (m.w.taunton@qmul.ac.uk) so we have a sense of potential numbers.

The Anglo Russian Research Network

The Anglo-Russian Research Network seeks to explore the influence of Russian and Soviet culture and politics in Britain in the period 1880-1950. Through an initial series of reading groups held on a termly basis at Pushkin House the network will convene discussions around key texts (translated from Russian or written in English) that mediate a vital cultural relationship–whether literary, aesthetic, linguistic, economic or political.  All are welcome.

Topics covered will include:

- the translation and reception of Russian literature, film and visual art in Britain
- the role of Russian literature, culture and politics in the development of British modernism
- bolshevism and the British left
- the reporting and discussion of the Russian Revolution and Soviet Russia in the British press
- internationalism and Soviet Russia
- Britons in Russia / Russians in Britain
- the development of cold war attitudes and the 'Iron Curtain'

For the purposes of the reading group, each meeting will focus on a text selected and introduced by a member of the network or an invited expert. On the one hand we will examine texts that emerged from Russia and were translated, including novels, films, political tracts and works of criticism. This might cover work by Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Eisenstein, Vertov, Gorky, Lenin and Trotsky, and would include consideration of the reception, translation and influence of these texts in Britain. On the other hand, we will discuss texts written in English but directly or indirectly formed by their engagement with Russian culture or politics. This might include the work of intellectuals who visited Russia and wrote about their experiences (such as Wells, Shaw, the Webbs, Keynes, Russell and Muggeridge), as well as texts by writers who never saw Russia, but nevertheless participated in its construction as an imaginary space.

We hope that the network will provide a context for developing future events and publications around this set of issues. Please let us know if you would be interested in participating in the reading group or being involved in some other way.

Rebecca Beasley (rebecca.beasley@queens.ox.ac.uk) and Matthew Taunton (m.w.taunton@qmul.ac.uk)