1. Disseminating Moldovan Identity:
Moldovan W!ters and "eir Au#ences du!ng Stalin%m
Petru Negură, Dr.

2. The audience(s) of the Moldovan Soviet
Literature during Stalinism
(1928-1940 / 1940-1953)
The target audience: the workers (urban and
rural)
The real audience: the educated readers
(teachers, students, komsomol members, etc.)

3. Main (hypo)thesis
These two audiences reflect the binary
structure of the Moldovan literary
milieu and the contents of the literary
output during Stalinism.They also
explain the evolution of that milieu.

4. 1924-1940 - the
Moldovan
Autonomous Soviet
Socialist Republic
(MASSR)
1940-1941, from 1944 -
the Moldovan Soviet
Socialist Republic
(MSSR)
1918-1940 - Bessarabia
- a Romanian province

5. The consulted sources
The Party CC and the Moldovan Writers'
Union's Archives
Interviews with writers and villagers (born in
the late 1920s)
A body of 150 literary texts (100 poems and 50
in prose)

6. The Moldovan "workers"
as "target audience"
An object of the Bolshevik official discourse: to be
"emancipated," transformed, educated...
Enlightenment, Marxist, and narodnik ideals of the "New
Man" (and masses as history makers)
"National-cultural building,""cultural revolution,"and the
"engineers of the human soul"
The Soviet (Moldovan) literature: narodnost' and partiinost'
The kolkhozy and kolkhoz workers as literary themes and
characters

7. The writers and kolkhoz
workers: a missed meeting
The literacy rate in the MASSR:
1926: 63% - illiterates
1937 - 85% - literate, including 20% half-literates
The rural, elderly, female population: the less educated
1924-1940 - 4 linguistic reforms in MASSR
Literacy campaigns and literary soirees in factories and
kolkhozes
In Bessarabia, in 1941, more than 50% - illiterates

8. The literary meetings in
kolkhozes in MASSR
The "literary soiree" in Ternauca village, in
october 1929: a failed meeting
To elevate the "working people" to the level of
the literature or to adapt the literature to the
educational level of the "people"?
In the 1930s - the writers' visits in kolkhozes - a
current practice, then a routine

9. An unpopular "popular"
literature
1935, in the Kotovski distrikt, only 4 % from the planned amount of
books were sold
1935, in the Ghedirim village, from 1300 books in the village
library, 463 in Moldovan - 40 books (in Moldovan) were
borrowed for reading (30 by pupils, 6 by kolkhoz workers)
1935, in the Rîbnița district, in the city school library - only 9
books in "Moldovan", no books in "Moldovan" in the kolkhoz
libraries and the Rîbnița sugar factory; in the whole district - only 6
subscriptions to the Octombrie review
1935, in Tiraspol, 1695 volumes of Octombrie review and 1010 of
Scînteia leninistă were to be "recycled."

10. The ambiguous status of
the "real audience"
Young teachers, students, komsomol members,
selkors, and rabkors, actively involved in literary
activities (literary circles, literary meetings /
soirees, reading houses, correspondence with the
Writers' Union and Octombrie review, writing
literature, criticizing the "professional" literature
etc.)
A pool of new recruits for journalism and the
Moldovan Writers' Union

11. Tinerimea, the young writers' group (within MWU), 1930

12. The literary audience in Soviet
Moldavia after '44: further stratification
From the late 1940s, young educated people claim
progressively a literature designed for their
interests, reference universe, "horizons d'attente"
From early 1950s, the first stories in prose written
for young professionals, teachers, journalists - self-
referentiality
The "peasant" prose reinvented (Ion Druță)
The literature for children

13. Instead of conclusion:
The stratification of the literary audience reflects the double
aim (and logic of action) of the Moldovan literary milieu:
The "social demand" (to educate and to trasform the "working
people")
The aesthetic vocation / function (to instill an aesthetic feeling)
The sub-field of large-scale production vs. the sub-field of
small-scale production (P. Bourdieu):
The existence of a "real" audience: a premise for literary
autonomisation

14. Epilogue
The "real audience" as mediator between
writers and the "target audience"
The Moldovan literature became a "mass
literature" starting from the 1950s, due to its
"real audience" (esp. teachers) who spread it
through schooling.