Parateksty kak semiotičeskoe pole bitvy: ideologičeskij kontrol' i recepcija G. Dž. Uėllsa v SSSR (1920–1930-e gg.)

This article offers a diachronic, comparative analysis of key paratexts accompanying Soviet editions of H. G. Wells’s translated works from the 1920s through the 1930s – including prefaces, critical essays, journal articles and afterwords, as well as the published transcript of Wells’s 23 July 1934 meeting with Stalin (issued in 1935; reissued 1937–39), alongside contemporary commentary. It attempts to identify strategies of ideological mediation: from the anti-Western, anti-bourgeois rhetoric of the first Soviet edition of "Russia in the Shadows" ("Rossiia vo mgle", 1922) to harsh condemnations of Wells’s utopian visions in late 1930s literary journals and reprints. The study shows that Soviet translators and paratext authors acted as cultural agents, reshaping Wells’s texts to meet ideological directives. It also considers the role of party-controlled criticism and key paratext authors –– from Lunacharsky and Zamyatin to Olesha and Shklovsky –– in shaping the reception of Wells’s work. Tracing these shifts reveals how Soviet literary translation became a ‘semiotic battlefield’ reflecting evolving cultural-policy priorities.