Organised by Susanne Frank (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin/EXC 2020), Research Area 1: "Competing Communities".

This presentation examines International Literature, a Comintern-backed multilingual journal project (1931–1945), as a distinctive practical model of constructing world literature in the mid-1930s Soviet Union. Focusing on 1934–1935, the analysis explores how the journal's four language editions (Russian, English, German, and French) attempted to realise the Marxist utopian vision of world literature premised on simultaneous multilingual publication and universal translatability. Using such digital humanities methods as database analysis and network visualisation, the study reveals fundamental asymmetries in how world literature was constructed differently across editions, promoting Moscow as the emerging centre of a new world literary system.

The presentation will demonstrate how this multilingual project created extensive transnational networks connecting writers from different parts of the world, while simultaneously establishing hierarchies of languages and authors. Ultimately, International Literature emerges as a uniquely ambitious yet asymmetrical space where the utopian concept of world literature confronted the international politics of the interwar period and the practical realities of Soviet publishing, editorial policy, and translation.

Online participation is possible via Cisco Webex: https://fu-berlin.webex.com/fu-berlin/j.php?MTID=mfbb77f3989470f57e4cd8d894338adf5