Why was Remarque’s book “All Quiet on the Western Front” banned in the USSR: the content n’has nothing to do with it!

As’separate edition, Remarque’s book was first published in Berlin at the very beginning of 1929 and has since been reprinted from’countless times. Today’today, this novel is officially recognized as the best-selling book in Germany in the’story of the’printing. It is curious that the’initially venerable publisher Samuel Fischer, to whom Erich Maria Remarque showed a new text, refused to l’print, deciding that “in the late twenties, no one’is interested in reading about the First World War”. Afterwards, Fischer bitterly regretted his decision – and the shortfall.

Of course, the book provoked heated public discussion. The events of 1914-1918, when the’Germany was fighting against France, the’England, Russia and the United States, have changed the lives of several generations of’Germans, essentially destroying the Kaiser’s regime and paving the way for nationalist political currents that almost brought everyone to disaster.

The events of those years are shown through the eyes of conscript Paul Baumer, who constantly loses a peaceful life, ideals, classmates – and, apparently, ends up dying himself. Independent German reviewers have called the book “a no-frills depiction of warfare” and, apparently, the first readers who were lucky enough to survive the events that Remarque described were from’agree with that.

In Germany, the National Socialists immediately took up arms against the book – the party had already taken power. In 1933, the Nazis, who claimed that Remarque’s text dishonored the German people and undermined the foundations of patriotism, even organized a demonstrative burning of volumes of All Quiet on the Western Front.

In the USSR, the book was accepted with great’interest and the’Russian-language edition in an authorized translation by A. Kossovich was published even before the’German edition. In 1929, there were three editions of this book of Remarque, addressed to the Soviet reader, moreover, in 1930, the novel was published in Roman-gazeta.

However, the book “All Quiet on the Western Front” n’did not please People’s Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov. In a personal letter to Stalin he’disdainfully called it “stupid bourgeois-pacifist literature”. But this n’wasn’t the reason the book was banned…

The preface written by revolutionary journalist Karl Radek for the publication of the translation of Sergei Myatezhny and Pyotr Cherevin in the house of'”Land and Factory” edition’turned out to be the culprit. This complex character several times in a row during these troubled years s’is found in disgrace, and even “changing shoes” from Trotskyists to Stalinists does not’didn’t help save his freedom and then his life. In 1937 he was sentenced, after which all of Radek’s numerous literary and critical works ended up in the “special deposit”. The same fate awaited the novel by Remarque with its preface.

In books kept in libraries, the preface was simply torn out and Radek’s name was blacked out on the cover. The novel’was “not recommended” for distribution to readers, although’he does’there have been no official complaints about the actual content of the book. Of course, it was also not available over the counter.

Remark’s work awaited a long oblivion – this n’that is’in 1959 that the house of’Pravda publishing has published a new volume, All Quiet on the Western Front, translated by Yuri Afonkin. The book returned to the Russian-speaking reader and took its rightful place on the shelves of libraries and homes.