Pale Fire of the Revolution

This chapter aims to explore the failed intercultural dialogue between Russian and Colombian literature, identifying the factors that contributed to its failure. While Russian literature had a considerable presence in Latin America, it aroused little interest among Colombian translators and writers until the last decades of the twentieth century. The lack of an adequate social environment, both formal and informal, resulting from the specificity of the Colombian cultural situation and the country’s unique relationship with Russia during the Cold War, was a major factor in this superficial reception of Russian literature in Colombia. However, the Soviet international educational project and generalized processes of globalization gradually increased direct engagement with Russian literature, including the number of translations. The chapter offers a first outline of the history of translation and reception of Russian literature in Colombia. It reviews the cultural situation in Colombia and analyzes examples of Russian literature’s reception in the twentieth century (Ramón Vinyes, Los Nuevos group, Luis Tejada, León de Greiff, and Gabriel García Márquez); it also summarizes the history of the Colombian-Soviet Cultural Institute, its publications and related cultural activities, and examines the work of Colombian translators of Russian literature.