John Cournos and the Politics of Russian Literature in The Criterion

This article summarizes the early career of Kievborn writer John Cournos, with emphasis on his exposure to the October Revolution and his treatment of its politics and literature, culminating in a long series of reviews of Russian literary periodicals for T. S. Eliot's journal, The Criterion. The purpose of this article is briefly to outline Cournos' background, his entry into the London literary world, and to concentrate mainly on his neglected work in bringing Soviet literary debates to English-language readers in the 1920s and 1930s. The general purpose of this research is to assess the cultural impact of the Russian Revolution on Modernism, especially in the 1920s. Cournos' reviews forg The Criterion, informed by his commitment to Russian letters, show that a detailed account of Soviet literary culture was available to an Anglo-American literary audience. The present work was supported by a Fellowship funded by the Leverhulme Trust.