Not just a light-hearted joke: Russian Moreana from the age of Karamzin to the rise of social democracy and Lenin's 'Stele of Freedom'

This chapter charts the sequence of Russian translations of Utopia from the late eighteenth century to Brezhnev’s ‘stagnation’ in the 1970s. The backstories to the translations (1789, 1901, 1903, 1935, 1978) are revelatory of the shifts in the broader sociopolitical climate and instructive as contextual frames for understanding More’s chequered reception in tsarist Russia and his importance after 1917. Among the key points of reference are the strengthening of absolute rule in response to revolutions in continental Europe (1789 and 1848), the emergence of a nativist socialism in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the introduction of Marxism thereafter. The later translations also spotlight issues related to scholarship, university politics, and, from around 1900, the ethos of mass education, a phenomenon which would anchor Bolshevik policy. Translated, then, for the masses, Utopia entered the Soviet canon, its legacy secured as a template for the workers’ liberation.