Return from the U.S.S.R. – Les voyages français en Union soviétique et leurs récits

Latest issue of the French journal Viatica, dedicated to travel literature.

9 | 2022 – Return from the U.S.S.R. “French Travels in the Soviet Union and Their Accounts”. Edited by Nikol Dzuib.

From Duhamel and Durtain to Maillart, passing through Malraux, the Bloch couple, Romain Rolland, Nizan, Herbart, Gide, and Guilloux, this issue focuses—apart from one exception, Simone de Beauvoir—on journeys to the USSR made in the late 1920s and the 1930s, a turning-point period that saw the transition from the “honeymoon phase” to the “era of suspicion.” Combining methodologies from imagology, genetic criticism, and reception studies, the contributors examine how travelers’ return journeys influenced both the narrative shaping of their travels and the construction of their respective authorial personas.

Journal website – online and free access