Kurt Vonnegut in the USSR

I went through my Kurt Vonnegut phase in my late teens. I read Player Piano, Cat’s Cradle, I think, Deadeye Dick, and of course, Slaughterhouse Five. I can’t say I remember much from those novels. Nor can I recall why Vonnegut connected with me. Perhaps now is a good time to revisit them. Little did I know that Vonnegut had a large readership in the Soviet Union. His books were translated by Rita Rait-Kovaleva and published in hundreds of thousands of copies. And in late Soviet fashion they were also passed around by hand to those who couldn’t secure copies. What did Soviet readers see in Kurt Vonnegut? How did the authorities regard this so-called “Anti-American American”? And what did Vonnegut think about his Soviet fans? Sarah Phillips wondered too after she participated in a project on Vonnegut. The result is her book, Kurt Vonnegut in the USSR. Sarah reached out to us, so we booked an interview. It turns out that Vonnegut has transcultural appeal. There’s even a revival in Ukraine. But what does Vonnegut’s popularity among Soviet youth say about really existing state socialism? Tune in to find out.

Guest:

Sarah Phillips is professor of anthropology at Indiana University-Bloomington. She’s the author of Women's Social Activism in the New Ukraine and Disability and Mobile Citizenship in Postsocialist Ukraine, both published by Indiana University Press. Her new book is Kurt Vonnegut in the USSR published by Bloomsbury.

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