Viktor Shklovsky and the Device of Ostensible Surrender

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Abstract
One frequently discussed problem in Western approaches to postrevolutionary Russian literature has been the temptation to identify “rebels against the system” and to praise their work out of proportion to its merits. Writers attacked in the Soviet Union for their heretical views have a good chance of being lionized in the West. A strange and notable exception to this pattern is Viktor Shklovsky, one of the earliest and most outspoken defenders of creative freedom in the Soviet Union. Though his books and articles were viciously attacked by the Marxist critics throughout the twenties, Western critics, viewing those same books and articles from the distance imposed by time and place, have seen them as a series of surrenders which hastened or even precipitated the collapse of the Formalist movement.

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