A POPULAR DEATH: RUSSIA'S RECEPTION OF FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA

This article examines the reception of Federico García Lorca in the Soviet Union during the 1930s and 1940s, during an age of great social changes, Stalinist purges, anti-cosmopolitan and anti-western campaigns, and under strict censorship policies. Many factors contributed to the popularity of Lorca, who is considered the most popular Spanish poet in Russia today. These factors include his death, which was carried out by fascist militias, the high quality of Russian translations, and more lenient censorship policies for foreign works. However, from the perspective of Reception Aesthetics, perhaps the most important reason for Lorca's enduring fame in Russia is due to themes and techniques in his work, elements which had already emerged in the Russo-Soviet field of cultural production and which allowed for the creation of a "horizon of expectations" among audiences, who found familiar aspects of his work in their own literary traditions. Este artículo examina la recepción de Federico García Lorca en la Unión Soviética entre 1935 y 1950, durante una época de grandes cambios sociales, de purgas estalinistas, de campañas anti-cosmopolitas y anti-occidentales, dentro de un marco de estricta censura. Hay muchos factores que contribuyeron a la popularidad de Lorca, ya que hoy en día es el poeta español más popular en Rusia. Estos incluyen su muerte, llevada a cabo por milicias fascistas, la alta calidad de las traducciones rusas y la política más tolerante hacia la censura de la literatura extranjera. No obstante, desde la perspectiva teórica de la estética de la recepción, tal vez la razón más importante de la fama perdurable de Lorca en Rusia se deba a los temas y a la técnica de su obra, elementos que ya surgían en el campo cultural ruso-soviético y permitían la creación de "un horizonte de expectativas" en un público que identificaba los aspectos familiares de su obra con sus propias tradiciones literarias.