INTRODUCTION: SCROUNGING IN THE SOVIET GARBAGE PIT 1 A New Paradigm 2 Recycling Toxic Heroes 5 CHAPTER 1: WRITING A PRECARIOUS BALANCE 11 Organizing the Human Psyche 13 Superfluous Men in Utopia: Aleksandr Bogdanov's Red Star (1908) 15 An Impossible Equilibrium: Evgeny Zamyatin's We (1920) 27 Dystopian Fear 38 CHAPTER 2: HE DOES NOT LOVE US WHEN WE ARE DIRTY 40 Hygienic Satire 42 "Bad Words Are Not Allowed": Mikhail Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog (1925) 43 Monstrous Words 53 Unmasking Satire: Vladimir Mayakovsky's Bedbug (1929) 55 The Death of Satire? 65 CHAPTER 3: THINGS THAT SHOULD NOT BE FOUND 68 Hygienic Narration 70 Unreliable Narrators: Yury Olesha's Envy (1927) 73 The Non-toxic Writer 85 Remapping the Alien Imagination: Lev Kassil's Shvambraniia (1932) 88 An Image Can Kill 106 CHAPTER 4: LOST IN TRANSLATION 110 Constructing a New Voice 113 Translating the Villainous Voice: Fedor Gladkov's Cement (1925) 115 Party-mindedness & the Socialist-realist Text 126 Rewriting the Writer: Valentin Kataev's Time Forward (1932) 129 The Writer as Telegraph Operator 142 CONCLUSION: WRITERS FORWARD! 146 Really Real Men, or Apologies for the Elephant 148 NOTES 151 BIBLIOGRAPHY 187.