First Congress of Soviet Writers

Report on the First Congress of Writers in Literaturnaya Gazeta

The First Congress of Soviet Writers was an all-Union meeting of writers, held in Moscow from August 17 to September 1, 1934, which led to the founding of the Union of Soviet Writers.

It was staged soon after Comintern had switched its popular in favour of forming a popular front with socialist parties and western intellectuals, against the threat from Nazi Germany. The congress has been described as "a high point of a comparatively interlude in the Stalin years."[1] It took place before the Great Purge in the Soviet Union, and after the start of the Nazi book burnings in Germany.

  1. ^ McSmith, Andy (2015). Fear and the Muse Kept Watch, The Russian Masters - from Akhmatova and Pasternak to Shostakovich and Eisenstein - Under Stalin. New York: The New Press. pp. 116–17. ISBN 978-1-59558-056-6.