The defense literature of early 1930s as a project of educating “a new person”

The turn of the 1920-1930s is characterized by large-scale changes in various spheres of social life and is transitional from the literary situation of the 1920s to a new model of the relationship between government and writers. The activities of the literary association of the Red Army and Navy (LOKAF), formed in 1930, were supervised by the Political Directorate of the Red Army and reflect the process of militarization of literature. However, the project’s objectives were not limited to preparing writers and readers for a future war: the ideologists of defense literature believed that defense texts should educate a “new person”. The article examines the works published on the pages of “Zalp” (the collection of articles and the journal) and the journal LOKAF in 1930-1932 and carries out the analysis of their topics which demonstrates close relation to the domestic and foreign political situation, against the background of which the personal qualities and behavior patterns of the Red Army soldiers and Red Navy sailors were discussed. The article touches upon the problem of the authors’ reception of the government’s ideological guidelines about socialist construction, class struggle, political vigilance and shows the possibility of a relative diversity of the writers and critics’ interpretations related to personal qualities and behavior patterns of the literature characters during the period under review. The writers of defense literature are shown not only as subjects, but also as objects of the project of educating a “new person”. The main attention is paid to the issue of forming ideas about what the “new person” of the “reconstruction period” should be, showing changes in the content of this concept in the conditions of the transition from the revolutionary art of the 1920s to socialist realism.