Antologie polskich przekładów z literatur republik radzieckich. Prezentacja i analiza danych bibliograficznych

Between 1945 and 1989, Poland’s position within the area of political influence of the USSR was reflected in the circulation of translated literature, notably through the significant number of published anthologies of translations from the minor literatures of the nations comprising the Soviet Union. In this article, I highlight the difficulties associated with obtaining bibliographic information on this topic from scattered and chaotic catalogue data. Additionally, I propose various interpretations of these data, sometimes consisting of contradictory information, as well as the absence of information. This presentation also aims to pose research questions arising directly from attempts to manage inconsistent data and to outline the general history of translations of the minor literatures of the Soviet nations in post-war Poland, which emerges from this data. The analysis of bibliographic data I present is also an attempt to show the ways in which Soviet Russia, as a center, facilitated the circulation of translations from the literatures of the Soviet republics. It may serve as a basis for developing research on these literatures in Polish translations, which would, on one hand, illustrate the extent to which their presence in Poland was politically conditioned and how those political factors regulated their reception, and, on the other hand, depict the Soviet empire in an ambiguous role of mediator that simultaneously “brings closer” the literatures of smaller nations and controls their presence in the target culture.