Paratexts as a Semiotic Battleground: Ideological Control and Reception of H. G. Wells in the USSR (1920s–1930s)

Abstract

This article offers a diachronic, comparative analysis of key paratexts accompanying Soviet editions of H. G. Wells’s translated works from the 1920s through the 1930s — including prefaces, critical essays, journal articles, afterwords, along with contemporary commentary. It attempts to identify strategies of ideological mediation: from the anti-Western, anti-bourgeois rhetoric of the first Soviet edition of Russia in the Shadows (Rossiia vo mgle, 1922) to harsh condemnations of Wells’s utopian visions in late-’30s literary journals and reprints. The study shows that Soviet translators and paratext authors acted as cultural agents, reshaping Wells’s texts to meet ideological directives. It also considers the role of party-controlled criticism and key paratext authors — from Lunacharsky and Zamyatin to Olesha and Shklovsky — in shaping the reception of Wells’s work. Tracing these shifts reveals how Soviet literary translation became a ‘semiotic battlefield’ reflecting evolving cultural-policy priorities.