This paper focuses on a key agent of  “world literature” in the Soviet Union,  Aleksandr Iosifovich Deich (1893–1972). Writer, translator, philologist, editor, literary critic, literary scholar and a networker par excellence, Deich devoted his 50-year long career to establishing relationships across cultures: Russian-Ukrainian, Russian-French, Ukrainian-French, Russian-German, Ukrainian–German, Russian-Uzbek. Working at the intersection of World and Soviet literature, Deich embodied the concept of Kulturträger both on an intranational and international level. The paper traces his strategies while navigating between them and sheds light on their interconnectedness.