Mariátegui and the problem of literary autonomy: the reception of Russian literature

This paper analyses José Carlos Mariátegui’s reception of Russian literature during the 1920s. For Mariátegui, the Russian Revolution brings about a change of times which implies not only a turning point as regards Russia’s political and economic life but also the confirmation of the imminent failure of the bourgeois civilizing process and, above all, the possibility of a revolutionary perspective in Peru. The relevance of literary analysis, within the framework of cultural criticism, can be noticed in studies related to European Avant-gardism as well as the incipient Realism in the continuity of the Bolshevik revolutionary process. Mariátegui’s critical interventions in the process introduced by the Revolution, therefore, shows a reinterpretation of history as an open process, in which the individual point of view interacts with the political project.