The Soviet antigones: the poets versus the state

Soviet poets, authors, theatre directors, filmmakers and composers were expected to trade their creative identity and unique vision for state support by choosing to work with state-approved forms of art, genres, styles and narratives. Some, however, rebelled and were duly punished (killed, silenced, expelled) for daring to defy the collective. This chapter will examine the fates of three Soviet authors – Osip Mandelstam, Mikhail Bulgakov and Joseph Brodsky using a combination of Lacanian and Jungian ideas, in particular, Lacan’s analysis of individual autonomy in Sophocles’ Antigone (441 BC) and the concept of the trickster (mainly in its Jungian version but also going beyond Jung’s vision of it).