Fellow traveler

As a fellow ( попутчики, poputschiki, " companions " ) Russian writers were referred to in the years after the October Revolution, which were not considered communists and usually not members of the Communist Party, but were nevertheless generally positive set to the revolution and to socialism. The term was coined by Leon Trotsky in his book Literature and Revolution of 1922, the second chapter, the " literary fellow travelers," treated.

The fellow insisted on a far-reaching autonomy of art in relation to politics. So they sat down in opposition to two other literary groups of the first Soviet years: the Proletcult authors who later organized themselves into the RAPP, and the Left Front of Art by Vladimir Mayakovsky. Unlike the fellow taken these two groups active party for the Bolshevik Revolution, and would aim to transform literature into politics, but of extremely different aesthetic starting points.

Among the best known representatives of the fellow include Serapionsbrüder in Petrograd, in particular Yevgeny Zamyatin, Konstantin Fedin, Veniamin Kaverin, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Vsevolod Ivanov, Nikolai Tikhonov, Lew Lunz and Elizabeth Polonskaja. Furthermore, Alexander Voronsky, Boris Pilnyak, Mikhail Bulgakov, Marietta Shaginyan and occasionally Isaak Babel were attributed to the Poputschiki. An important organ of Poputschiki was the literary magazine Krasnaya Now, which was led by Voronsky.

The term is ( compagnons de route ) was far later, often used in the Cold War, the West in a derived meaning in its English ( fellow travel travelers ), and occasionally French translation. In this sense, he called intellectuals who were not communists, but - as has been assumed - objectively acted in the interests of the Soviet Union.