The Russian Association of Proletarian Writers, also known under its transliterated abbreviation RAPP (Russian: Российская ассоциация пролетарских писателей, РАПП) was an official creative union in the Soviet Union established in January 1925.
Among its stated purposes was "to scourge and chastice " in the name of the Party", i.e., effectively encouraging censorship of literature on ideological grounds. Among the first targets were Yevgeny Zamiatin and Boris Pilnyak. It became notorious for its "enthusiastic" attacks on writers who failed to fit the RAPP's definition of the "true Soviet writer", which have eventually earned criticism from the leadership of the Bolshevik party. Among its targets were both pro- and anti-Bolshevik writers, notably including Mikhail Bulgakov, Maxim Gorki, Vladimir Mayakovski, Alexey Tolstoy, Boris Pilniak, and Yevgeni Zamyatin.
In April 1932 RAPP, together with other creative unions, such as Proletkult VOAPP, and Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians, was disbanded, and the USSR Union of Writers (together other new creative unions) was established instead.
Famous quotes containing the words proletarian writers, russian, association, proletarian and/or writers:
“It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be within the grasp of superficially educated people. It is not a natural growth, much as its proletarian writers would like to think so. But compared with it at its best, English has reached the Alexandrian stage of formalism and decay.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“I won the battle the wrong way when our worthy Russian generals were losing it the right way.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“... a Christian has neither more nor less rights in our association than an atheist. When our platform becomes too narrow for people of all creeds and of no creeds, I myself cannot stand upon it.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“This fantastic state of mind, of a humanity that has outrun its ideas, is matched by a political scene in the grotesque style, with Salvation Army methods, hallelujahs and bell-ringing and dervishlike repetition of monotonous catchwords, until everybody foams at the mouth. Fanaticism turns into a means of salvation, enthusiasm into epileptic ecstacy, politics becomes an opiate for the masses, a proletarian eschatology; and reason veils her face.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“And truly Philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do those ancient writers derive all their authority but from the poets?”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)