"Salinger's 'Catcher In The Rye' Resonated Behind Iron Curtain As Well"

[János Székely]

The point is that during the Cold War the Russians wanted to learn as
much of the Enemy as they could. (Yes, mainly for intelligence
purposes but there was also some real fascination and a kind of
sympathy. Imperial minds on both sides.) American culture was part of
it. English was the main foreign language in grammar schools, and
there was a well-trained Anglo philologist elite at the universities.
(I have an English-language anthology of American poetry from the
early 1970s with substantial examples from the Black Mountain School,
the Beats etc.) Vaguely leftist (like Hemingway) or non-political
American fiction was not published for its anti-American value
(nothing could be a better ad for the American way of life than
'Catcher') but as a kind of safety valve. Apart from savvy
intellectuals, it was read as pulp fiction, not as something related
to what is possible in 'reality'. I mean the basic raw material for
realist novels (free individual agents wanting something and attaining
it or getting defeated, instead of just passively suffering the
conditions, or being part of a 'collective' or organization) was in
short supply. It seems that in a collectivist society where you
weren't supposed to be alone for a single moment, reading about an
intelligent teenager, who is sticking to his own opinions, and roaming
in a place like New York City all alone (and not dying of hunger or
being taken by the police for loitering) was like watching Star Wars
for the majority (and a role model for a minority).

János

2010/2/9 Richard Fiero <rfiero at gmail.com>:
> Richard Fiero wrote:
>>
>>
>> http://www.rferl.org/content/Salingers_Catcher_In_The_Rye_Resonated_Behind_Iron_Curtain_As_Well/1943025.html
>> By Nikola Krastev
>> . . .
>> The book struck a chord with American teenagers who identified with the
>> novel's themes of alienation, innocence and rebellion.
>>
>> But when the novel was translated into Russian during the "Khrushchev
>> thaw", its anti-hero's tormented soul-searching also reverberated among
>> admirers throughout the Soviet bloc.
>
> The point of this post was that the article appeared on Radio Free
> Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL):
> "Founded as an anti-communist source of information during the Cold War,
> RFE/RL was headquartered at Englischer Garten in Munich, Germany from 1949
> to 1995."
> It's clear that "The Catcher in the Rye" was used as a possibly
> destabilizing present to the Eastern Bloc by the US taxpayers in 1960 when
> the Soviet authorities considered the book critical of US culture.
> Very funny.
>