Wilson Center Experts

Analysis of leftist reactions to works of Zola, Checkhov, and other major writers in Russia and France from the 180s to the 1960s to confront these questions: Why has the left disapproved the literary avant-garde more often than not? What light does this comparative history of Russian and French experience shed on differentt ypes of the claim to know human realities--the literary, the ideological, and the scientific types? What are the interacting effects of ideas and social contexts, with special attention to varieties of Marxism and of modernist literature?