Chapter 1 - Introduction

Summary

Bakhtin's biography is difficult to untangle, for two reasons. First, because his repression by the Soviet government meant his work was, for the most part, denied a public hearing until late in his life. Second, because the rediscovery of Bakhtin in the 1960s and 1970s was plagued by political arguments over not only the meaning of his work, but even the basic facts of his biography. This chapter disentangles the facts, as best we know them, from the myths that have been woven around the man. The result is a picture of a scholar far more integrated into the intellectual world around him than is usually admitted. Bakhtin had an extraordinarily trying and difficult life, marked by revolution, Stalinist repression, and the war, but he managed to create works of exceptional intensity and interest despite that.