The Writers’ Union: An Institutional Model and its Limits
The aim of the communist states’ cultural policies was to unify and homogenise the writers’ communities in order to control and easily assign them precise ideological functions. The USSR thus created the Writers’ Union, a monopolistic literary institution. After the Second World War this model was reproduced in East European countries that
... [Show full abstract] adopted communist rule. Individual countries’ strategies as well as intense cooperation with similar institutions in the Soviet space followed the Soviet institutional model during all of the communist period. Nevertheless, documents suggest changes that showed the limits of the Writers’ Union. In some cases, doubts were expressed about the model, and some unions even became protest platforms against the political power, which violated their initial agreement. Internal tensions in the unions and tensions in the literary exchanges contradict the existence of a perfect harmony within the Soviet bloc. These institutions thus provide a suitable ground for analyzing the meanings and relevance of the notion of Soviet bloc.
