Abstract:

An adapted and abridged version of H. Wells’ novel “The World Set Free” made by S.D. Krzyżanowski in summer 1923 was found in Gosizdat archives in the Manuscript Department of A.M. Gorky Institute of the World Literature RAS. It has been never published before. It was not the original that Krzyżanowski used but the translation made by M. Likiardopulo in 1914. While working, Krzyżanowski obviously took into consideration the ideological context of his time; on the one hand, he cut the text, on the other, he “expanded” it to make it understandable for the workers and peasants. The title of the novel loses its general subtitle “A Story of Mankind” abstracting away the precise class content. We can see that Likiardopulo’s translation was revised not mechanically but in view of the shape that was bound to arise in the Russian-speaking worker-peasant audience. The manuscript was sent to the literary and art department of Gosizdat in the series “Izba-chitalnya” but did not got past the censors and was rejected as a utopian story wrongly covering social events. The adaptation made by Krzyżanowski is published here for the first time.