Becoming Socialist

This section of the anthology gives readers a glimpse of the transformation of Central Asian literatures under early twentieth-century socialism from the early 1920s to the 1940s. While the manuscript tradition continued and even new authors joined it because of Stalinist oppression, Soviet cultural elites poured considerable resources not only into expanding print, but also establishing European literary genres and politicizing the content of the newly delimited national literatures of Central Asia.