Soviet literature from the 1950s and 1960s referencing Czechoslovakia

[Elise Thorsen]

Regarding references to consumer goods from Czechoslovakia: Czech furniture
is a prominent element, associated with materialism and bourgeois
generational attitudes, in Viktor Rozov's play *V poiskakh radosti*
(*Teatr*12, 1957).

That's at the very least--furniture from the Soviet bloc was a literary
trope of the time (East German furniture figures in an episode of Vasilii
Aksenov's 1961 *Zvezdnyi bilet*, when the protagonists come face to face
with commercial transactions that are not aboveboard), but other fifties and
sixties texts are not near to hand or memory to check when this commonplace
is specifically Czech in its manifestation, sorry.

Best,
Elise Thorsen

Ph.D. Student
Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures
University of Pittsburgh


On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 9:31 AM, Rachel Applebaum <rapple at uchicago.edu>wrote:

> Dear List Members,
>
> As part of my dissertation on Soviet-Czechoslovak social and cultural
> contacts in the postwar period, I'm looking for Soviet novels and short
> stories (or other works of literature) from the 1950s and 1960s that make
> reference to either 1) travel to Czechoslovakia 2) consumer goods from
> Czechoslovakia or 3) Czechoslovak cultural exports such as films, music,
> art, etc. I believe someone once told me there is a story by Tatyana
> Tolstaya which talks about Czechoslovak furniture, and I would be very
> grateful if anyone knows the title.
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> Rachel Applebaum
> Ph.D. Candidate
> Department of History, University of Chicago
>
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