The Monday begins on Saturday by Strugacky Brothers contains a short humorous commentary on the differences between American and Soviet science-fiction. One of the protagonists using a technomagical contraption accidentally visits a literal 'world of literature', where he finds himself in two lands - one heavily urbanised, with many curious technological devices he never heard of, the other - filled with scorched earth and constant warfare. Boris Strugacki said in during one of the meetings I witnessed that this how he saw the main difference between Western and Eastern sci-fi. The former focused heavily on direct conflict, war and survival, the latter was focused on technical advances.

This is not to say that the division was strict. While Soviet (or Eastern European) literature shunned the subject of open conflict (pretty understandable after what Eastern Europe witnessed during Second World War) with the exception of historical fiction (but People as Gods by Sergey Snyegov is a notable exception), Western literature had its share of social fiction, with Ray Bradbury being the most prominent author of the genre.

Horror almost ceased to exist in Soviet era, even though it was pretty popular in Russian Empire and it is argued that ot were the Russians who introduced the vampire to the literature (The Vourdalak Family and The Vampires predate Carmilla and Dracula by several decades). Soviets apparently decided that the horror themes, that in Russia were inspired predominantly by Russian folklore are the remnants of old superstition and feudalism that has no place in the modern society, and thus shunned not only horror, but any kind of fantasy. Given that virtually all publishing houses were state-owned and until 1970's unauthorised publications could have been construed as subversive action, all attempts to officially publish anything that wasn't endorsed by government was very difficult. Sure, some authors self-published unofficially (in so called 'samizdat' or 'second circulation') but even there horror was extremely scarce. Some stories, like Фирма >>Прощай, оружие!<< (Farewell to Arms Ltd. [1]) by Alexandr Abramov or "Последняя дверь* (The Last Door) by Mikhail Yemtsev and Yeremey Parnov are sometimes counted as horror, but they are still retaining the basic frame of a sci-fi genre, with more unexplained events added for a good measure. The same applies to the sci-fi stories Роковые яйца (The Fatal Eggs) and Собачье сердце (Heart of the Dog) by Mikhail Bulgakov that were, much like his Мастер и Маргарита (The Master and Margarita) a thinly-veiled satire about the communism. The last two were effectively prohibited in USSR until late 1980's.

One of the most known example of Soviet-era psychological horror would be the novel Шатуны (Wanderers, published in English in 1980 as The Sky Above Hell) by Yuri Mamleyev. It hasn't been printed until 1980 in US and until 1994 (if I recall correctly) in Russia, but given themes of explicit sadism, infanticide and sexual perversion, it would be hard to publish it anywhere in the 1960's.

One element of Soviet censorship that is not always obvious is the fact that in the case of science-fiction specifically and literature in general censors were more considered about morality than politics, Unless the work attacked specific politicians or communism directly, it could have been easily greenlit, provided it did not challenge the morals.

If you're interested in Soviet genre literature, you probably know the best known genre abroad, that is, the science-fiction, so I won't say much about it here. As I wrote above, most sci-fi literature were of social-fiction persuasion and focused heavily on progress of technology and function of futuristic societies. Most of these are essentially existentialist or psychological, using science fiction tropes to discuss the various facets of humanity. A common trope was either the idea of non-interference (Обитаемый остров [Prisoners of Power], Попытка к бегству [Escape Attempt], Трудно быть богом [Hard to be a God], all by Boris and Arkadiy Strugatsky) or sheer impossibility to contact with alien sentient creatures (Пикник на обочине [Roadside Picnic], Малыш [The Kid] by Strugackiy Brothers or Люди как боги [People as Gods] by Sergey Snyegov). The threat that technological progress may pose to idea of humanity was common theme in the works of Sever Gansovsky (Шесть гениев [Six geniuses], День гнева [Day of Wrath]). Contrary to what one might have expected, overt propaganda was pretty rare and the books and movies were more concerned with portrayal of personal interactions and technological progress, not unlike Western exploration s-f (Van Vogt, Asimov etc.). Туманность Андромеды (Andromeda Galaxy) by Ivan Yefremov is more of an exception rather than a rule.

Direct social conflicts were shunned in s-f, and thus there was no genres comparable to cyberpunk in Soviet Russia, quite possibly because this could have been construed as an attempt to expose gaping difference between propaganda and actual standards of living in the USSR.

If there is one important difference among the Soviet and American sci-fi writes is that Soviet ones were not professional writes in the Western sense. Due to lack of true free market economy, writing was more a hobby or additional income for writers who most often than not were scientists, engineers or academic teachers (imagine most of the s-f books being written by people like Carl Sagan and you will have a good approximation).

I'm not too well-versed in crime literature in USSR, and I don't know how well it relates to the crime novels and movies in satellite countries, so I hope someone more knowledgeable will cover that topic.

[1] Not sure whether the English translation exists, if yes, the English title may vary.

Now this topic is generally very interesting, see if you just typed into google or any other search engine let’s say : “Communist attitudes towards fiction” google would spit out a list of many very wonderful western books about communism and not what you are looking for, but I think I’ve found what you might be asking about.

Now I personally don’t think the average revolutionary is going to mind horror, they must have seen a fair few in their time, but the ideology could have possibly used horror in the form of propaganda, creating horror novels based on the horror of the western world while expanding on the themes that follow :

I managed to find a rabbit hole surrounding the key word Proletarian, this actually let me get some reading done on the subject, from what I can tell Russian authors in the early days at the very least were very focused on what almost amounts to leftist propaganda in the form of heroic tales of communism, and this dominated the book stores for years. This is possibly where you’d find some horror tales.

But proletarian mearly refers to working class literature (written by and about) and that’s not what your after.

So we’ve established the soviets we’re in fact writing works of fiction, but so far, (1930’s) it’s dominated by just short of propaganda tales. (And its genre is now referred to a socialist realism)

Now as a more politically inclined kind of guy, I decided to do some digging about the rules and regulations around writing at this time, the soviets went so far as to silence church bells after the revolution, fearing god would be a cause of an uprising against the regime of Stalin, so it wouldn’t be to much of a stretch to believe they may have banned certain types of literature, my theory was that they may have banned foreign literature, and this would have maybe isolated soviet literature in time, and possibly they would have never really been exposed to the genres you mention.

Well what I didn’t expect to learn of was ‘Glavlit’ a government agency established in 1922 to safeguard state secrets, however Glavlit found itself safeguarding its own government from harmful works of texts. Interestingly certain topics like famine, and bloodshed were complete black areas, quickly being covered over, and although not officially stated, knowing the Russians, you also more than likely found yourself on a list...

Now foreign texts weren’t actually banned, but where very heavily censored to cut out mentions if anything negative party, negative red army, anything slightly eluding technological inferiority and of course this all varried depending on the views of the officer censoring the texts.

Amazingly socialist realism lasted until the 60’s, so Glavlit knew how to do its job right. But because of there being no ban I could find mention of against outside literature, just heavy censorship, it’s my belief that the soviet people would have been able to buy the books you mention on the shelf, maybe with a few altered words here and there and redacted sentences, it may not have sparked a landslide literature renaissance, but boring as it is, the people of the union more than likely developed there taste at the same pace as the west after the dying down of socialist realism in the 60’s.

Although we love to view the soviets as one big red army, with millions of men at its disposal, the Soviet Union was a nation with millions of civilians, many of which could not read, but thouse who could were not to different from you an I. Only they lived under Red, Not Blue.

Notes from me: Very interesting question, is be interested to hear what your inspiration for the question was, normally people are more interested in Russian land doctrine, or foreign policy. But bravo for the very original question ! I do apologise for not being able to track down specifics, I’m a bit strapped for resources, but I hope this gives you a vague overview of how the soviets own approach to literature worked, and of course foreign literature, and I hope you can use what I’ve tried to show to find out more of your own questions !

Sources : Proletarian Literature

Socialist Realism

Glavlit

More Censorship Research

I'm not familiar with horror in Soviet literature, but there was certainly science fiction being written under Soviet censorship. There were basically two routes: Write something that would get past the censors like Chingiz Aitmatov's The day Lasts 100 Years, or send the manuscript to be published out of the country like Yevgeny Zamyatin's We. (Sometimes just publishing in a foreign language, sometimes publishing in Russian and then re-importing the book to the Soviet Union.) The latter option didn't always end well, Zamyatin basically got blacklisted for doing that but Abram Tertz (pen name of Andrei Sinyavsky) ended up spending years in a gulag for publishing On Socialist realism abroad.

Some of the non-Socialist Realism genre writers were writing things that don't fit into the common genres we think of in the US, at least. Tertz's Little Jinx is an example of weird but not really fitting into a standard genre. But, Russian literature has had a trend of weirdness to it for at least a couple centuries. See Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground or Gogol's... Well just about all of Gogol's works as a mature writer. (The Nose might qualify as horror.)

Then we have Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. If you want to understand noncomformist writers under Soviet censorship, read this novel and then some critical works about the novel, such as The Master and Margarita: A Critical Companion edited by Laura Weeks. The Master and Margarita is a tremendous resource for discussion around writing under the Soviet censorship regime, some articles that might be of interest are:

• Kisel, Maria. "Feuilletons Don't Burn: Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita and the Imagined “Soviet Reader “." Slavic Review 68.3 (2009): 582-600.

• Rzhevsky, L. "Pilate’s Sin: Cryptography in Bulgakov’s Novel, The Master and Margarita." Canadian Slavonic Papers 13.1 (1971): 1-19.

• Tertz's On Socialist Realism is another good place to start as well.

The icing on the cake is that The Master and Margarita is an excellent novel that bounces between a story of the Devil putting on a vaudeville style show in St. Petersburg and a retelling of the story of Jesus that's reminiscent of The Life of Brian with more tragedy and less humor. The main character happens to be a Russian writer who can't get his plays produced because of a couple run-ins with the censors. Funnily enough, Bulgakov happened to be a writer who couldn't get his plays produced because of a couple of run-ins with the censors, and never expected this novel to be published. There's a lot of metaphorical stuff going on in that novel at multiple levels, the critical resources help you untangle what's metaphor, what's reference to history or current events, and what Soviet readers, authors, and censors would see when they read the story.

Outside of the Soviet Union, Franz Kafka seems to fit the bill really well for what you're interested in. Unfortunately I know very little of his life experiences.