Reading Daniel Aaron’s Writers on the Left on the F train this morning, I found out that Walt Whitman was one of the very first American writers translated by the Soviet government after the Revolution. Reading around the internet after I got home, I discovered the following: In 1919, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Red Army Deputies printed 50,000 copies of Leaves of Grass. During the Civil War, Whitman’s works were rushed to Red Army soldiers at the front. Between the Revolution and the collapse of the Soviet Union, 28 editions of Whitman’s works were published. I also found out, from Aaron, that initial funding for The Masses came from the Vice President of the New York Life Insurance Company. Things […]