Pereval

(The Pass), a literary group formed in Moscow late in 1923 at the journal Krasnaia nov’ (Red Virgin Soil).

Pereval’s aesthetic platform crystallized in the late 1920’s. The group’s theorists, D. A. Gorbov and A. Z. Lezhnev, developed several ideas found in A. K. Voronskii’s book The Art of Seeing the World (1928). Voronskii had viewed creativity as a “lifting of veils” and regarded “spontaneous” impressions as the basis of literature; Pereval promulgated the principles of “sincerity” and intuitionism (“Mozarteanism”) in literature. These principles were embodied in the works of M. Barsukov, N. N. Zarudin, and P. V. Sletov and partially in the writings of I. I. Kataev, one of the group’s most important writers.

The idealistic tendencies in Pereval’s theory and practice reflected the ideological instability of some intellectual circles of the 1920’s. At the same time, these tendencies were a reaction against the oversimplifications and distortions of the members of RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers) and the “rationalism” of LEF (Left Front of the Arts) and of the con-structivists. Sharp criticism of Pereval, intensified early in the 1930’s, caused the group’s gradual disbandment. Among the writers who left were M. M. Prishvin, E. G. Bagritskii, and P. A. Pavlenko. After the enactment of the decree of the Central Committee of the ACP(B) of Apr. 23, 1932, On the Reorganization of Literary and Artistic Organizations, the group dissolved.