In the preface to Made Under Pressure: Literary Translation in the Soviet Union, 1960–1991, Natalia Kamovnikova characterizes translation in Soviet Russia as the work of complex and shifting “relationships” between translators and texts, censors, readers, publishing houses, and market forces, as well as the complicated relationships among translators living in (then) Leningrad and Moscow. The latest title in University of Massachusetts Press's series Studies in Print Culture and History of the Book, Made Under Pressure combines first-person interviews, archival research, translation theory, some close-reading, and Russian book history to paint a vivid picture of the ways in which dedicated translators and publishing houses worked to make foreign literary texts available to a broad swath of readers while negotiating ambiguous and ever-changing censorship standards in the Soviet Union.
The introduction and chapters 1 and 2 frame the book's examination of translation in the Soviet Union between 1960 and 1991. Kamovnikova...
