Decolonial Paradigm in Magazine Avots Literary Translations in 1987

Abstract

In the second half of the 1980s, the polemical literary magazine Avots created a cultural space that reflected and encouraged the transition from a colonial to a postcolonial society in the Latvian SSR. The magazine functioned as a hybrid space in which decolonial processes and practices of resistance unfolded. At that time, Latvia remained under Soviet occupation; yet Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost1 and perestroika2 sought to liberalise Soviet totalitarian rule. Meanwhile, Latvia’s Third Awakening had begun, and its developments were increasingly visible in the society. The editorial of magazine employed Gorbachev’s reforms to legitimise bold editorial decisions – evident notably in the publication of foreign literature –
and approached translation as a form of resistance against Soviet ideology and its privileged aesthetic of socialist realism. Drawing on the author’s compiled database of publications in Avots in 1987, quantitative findings and the case studies highlight the magazine’s decolonial orientation and its departure from the official Soviet agenda and literary canon, thus enriching literary polysystem in Latvia.