Literary translation as an instrument of censorship in Soviet Russia: The institutionalization of the Soviet translator

In the Soviet Union, literary translation was a cultural institution with a strong element of censorship involved. It acted according to the rules of the complex Soviet censorship machine, which conceived modalities of intervention on society aimed not only at punishing, but also at preventing dangerous thoughts and behaviours and at forging the mentality of homo sovieticus. Thus, Soviet translators firstly had their own inner censor, a censor nested in their soul, that could determine their behaviour in accordance with the prescriptive code of Socialist Realism. Secondly, they exercised their role as censors, obeying the tenets of the Writers’ Union and the Translators’ Section, by cleansing the 'foreign’, potentially subversive texts from the 'alien' world of the foreigner. To forge the new translator, a web of institutions was needed that would create and control such translators. This new role produced through a top-down system that went from the Party to the Writers’ Union and became embedded in a Translators’ Section. Through this process the institutionalization of the Soviet translator was carried out.