“To Brew a Prefabricated Medley of the Wreckage of All Groups”: The Russian Association of Proletarian Writers in the Federation of Associations of Soviet Writers

The Federation of Soviet Writers’ Associations (FOSP) is examined for the first time from the perspective of the sociology of the literary process. The traditional historical and literary question of who created the FOSP and why is replaced here by a more significant problem from the point of view of the literary process: why did the FOSP emerge in the conditions of competition on the market of literary production, who needed the FOSP most in the conditions of the market economy, and, finally, whether there was any prospect of the FOSP continuing to function after 1932. It is shown that the FOSP and its institutions, first and foremost the Federation publishing house, were the legitimate product of the NEP era and served the strategic goals of the Proletarian Union of Soviet Writers. Since the “genetic code” of the FOSP, like that of the Proletarian Association, belonged to the NEP era, the Federation had no chance of taking root in the economic and political conditions of the 1930s.