“For many of us, the reason to be involved in the project and have it happen precisely at what would seem this inauspicious, high-tension political moment, is that we can start to find bridges between the two cultures and ways to talk to each other.”

But the project also ignited a bit of scholarly debate. In sometimes raised voices, the academics at the conference tried to tackle a set of thorny questions: Which books will go on the list? Should it include relatively new post-Soviet literature? Will this be perceived as a new canon, and how can that be avoided?

Jennifer Crewe, the director of Columbia University Press, said that the book list should include a “smattering of classics” that needed new translations, as well as post-Soviet and current Russian literature. With time still needed to select the first series of titles and translate them, the soonest they would be published is 2017.

The conference was organized by Read Russia, an American nongovernmental organization partly sponsored by the Russian government that promotes Russian literature in translation. Peter Kaufman, the head of Read Russia, said that the project would help Russia “make up for lost time” in promoting its culture, noting similar initiatives like Spain’s Cervantes Institute. The Russian government is also supporting the project through grants from the Institute for Literary Translation, an institute based in Moscow that promotes Russian literature.

Translated works are a niche market in the United States and the appearance of 10 new literary translations each year for the next decade would signify an important development, especially if the authors are not named Tolstoy, Chekhov and Dostoevsky.