Communism, Christianity, and Translating Russian Jews: Liudmila Ulitskaia's Daniel Stein and Aleksandr Meilakhs's Bentsion Shamir

This article examines two novels from the last decade written by Russian‐Jewish writers, Liudmila Ulitskaia's Daniel Stein, Translator and Aleksandr Meilakhs' Red Zion. Both novels feature remarkably similar protagonists, unique for Russian literature: Polish‐born Jews who survive the Shoah and immigrate to Israel. They use these characters' lives and stories as means of exploring contemporary Russian‐Jewish identity. I read the two novels and their attitudes toward ethnic identity in the historical shadow of the Soviet Nationalities Policy, which promoted the seemingly contradictory values of universalism and ethnic nationalism at one in the same time and inspired diverse and complex reactions in verbal art. The contrast between Ulitskaia and Meilakhs is most apparent in their attitudes toward translation, an important question for the Soviet Nationalities Policy and one which still resonates in the twenty‐first century. While Ulitskaia's novel sees translation as creation and way for Russian‐Jewish identity to progress and live, Meilkahs' see translation only as loss. The two novels therefore offer two divergent paths in how to construct identity and verbal art.