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Russian literature refers to the literature of
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia
Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
, its émigrés, and to Russian-language literature. Major contributors to Russian literature, as well as English for instance, are authors of different ethnic origins, including bilingual writers, such as Kyrgyz novelist Chinghiz Aitmatov. At the same time, Russian-language literature does not include works by authors from the Russian Federation who write exclusively or primarily in the native languages of the indigenous non-Russian ethnic groups in Russia
Russia, as the largest country in the world, has great ethnic diversity. It is a multinational state and home to over 190 ethnic groups countrywide. According to the population census at the end of 2021, more than 147.1 million people lived in Rus ...
, thus the famous Dagestani poet Rasul Gamzatov is omitted.
The roots of Russian literature can be traced to the Early Middle Ages
The Early Middle Ages (or early medieval period), sometimes controversially referred to as the Dark Ages (historiography), Dark Ages, is typically regarded by historians as lasting from the late 5th to the 10th century. They marked the start o ...
when Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic ( ) is the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language and the oldest extant written Slavonic language attested in literary sources. It belongs to the South Slavic languages, South Slavic subgroup of the ...
was introduced as a liturgical language and became used as a literary language
Literary language is the Register (sociolinguistics), register of a language used when writing in a formal, academic writing, academic, or particularly polite tone; when speaking or writing in such a tone, it can also be known as formal language. ...
. The native Russian vernacular remained the use within oral literature
Oral literature, orature, or folk literature is a genre of literature that is spoken or sung in contrast to that which is written, though much oral literature has been transcribed. There is no standard definition, as anthropologists have used v ...
as well as written for decrees, laws, messages, chronicles, military tales, and so on. By the Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment (also the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment) was a Europe, European Intellect, intellectual and Philosophy, philosophical movement active from the late 17th to early 19th century. Chiefly valuing knowledge gained th ...
, literature had grown in importance, and from the early 1830s, Russian literature underwent an astounding "Golden Age" in poetry, prose and drama. The Romantic movement contributed to a flowering of literary talent: poet Vasily Zhukovsky and later his protégé Alexander Pushkin
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin () was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era.Basker, Michael. Pushkin and Romanticism. In Ferber, Michael, ed., ''A Companion to European Romanticism''. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. He is consid ...
came to the fore. Mikhail Lermontov
Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov ( , ; rus, Михаи́л Ю́рьевич Ле́рмонтов, , mʲɪxɐˈil ˈjʉrʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ˈlʲerməntəf, links=yes; – ) was a Russian Romanticism, Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called ...
was one of the most important poets and novelists. Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol; ; (; () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright of Ukrainian origin.
Gogol used the Grotesque#In literature, grotesque in his writings, for example, in his works "The Nose (Gogol short story), ...
and Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev ( ; rus, links=no, Иван Сергеевич ТургеневIn Turgenev's day, his name was written ., p=ɪˈvan sʲɪrˈɡʲe(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ tʊrˈɡʲenʲɪf; – ) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poe ...
wrote masterful short stories and novels. Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in both Russian and world literature, and many of his works are considered highly influent ...
and Leo Tolstoy
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy Tolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; ,Throughout Tolstoy's whole life, his name was written as using Reforms of Russian orthography#The post-revolution re ...
became internationally renowned. Other important figures were Ivan Goncharov, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin and Nikolai Leskov
Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov (; – ) was a Russian novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and journalist, who also wrote under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky. Praised for his unique writing style and innovative experiments in form, and held ...
. In the second half of the century Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; ; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, widely considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his b ...
excelled in short stories and became a leading dramatist. The end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century is sometimes called the Silver Age of Russian poetry
Silver Age (Сере́бряный век) is a term traditionally applied by Russian philologists to the last decade of the 19th century and first two or three decades of the 20th century. It was an exceptionally creative period in the history o ...
. The poets most often associated with the "Silver Age" are Konstantin Balmont, Valery Bryusov, Alexander Blok, Anna Akhmatova
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko rus, А́нна Андре́евна Горе́нко, p=ˈanːə ɐnˈdrʲe(j)ɪvnə ɡɐˈrʲɛnkə, a=Anna Andreyevna Gorenko.ru.oga, links=yes; , . ( – 5 March 1966), better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova,. ...
, Nikolay Gumilyov, Sergei Yesenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky ( – 14 April 1930) was a Russian poet, playwright, artist, and actor. During his early, Russian Revolution, pre-Revolution period leading into 1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Ru ...
, and Marina Tsvetaeva
Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva ( rus, Марина Ивановна Цветаева, p=mɐˈrʲinə ɪˈvanəvnə tsvʲɪˈta(j)ɪvə, links=yes; 31 August 1941) was a Russian poet. Her work is some of the most well-known in twentieth-century Russ ...
. This era produced novelists and short-story writers, such as Aleksandr Kuprin, Nobel Prize winner Ivan Bunin, Leonid Andreyev, Fyodor Sologub, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Alexander Belyaev, Andrei Bely
Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev (, ; – 8 January 1934), better known by the pen name Andrei Bely or Biely, was a Russian novelist, Symbolist poet, theorist and literary critic. He was a committed anthroposophist and follower of Rudolf Steiner. Hi ...
and Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (; ), was a Russian and Soviet writer and proponent of socialism. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Before his success as an aut ...
.
After the Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution, social change in Russian Empire, Russia, starting in 1917. This period saw Russia Dissolution of the Russian Empire, abolish its mona ...
of 1917, literature split into Soviet and white émigré
White Russian émigrés were Russians who emigrated from the territory of the former Russian Empire in the wake of the Russian Revolution (1917) and Russian Civil War (1917–1923), and who were in opposition to the revolutionary Bolshevik com ...
parts. While the Soviet Union assured universal literacy and a highly developed book printing industry, it also established ideological censorship. In the 1930s Socialist realism became the predominant trend in Russia. Its leading figures were Nikolay Ostrovsky, Alexander Fadeyev and other writers, who laid the foundations of this style. Ostrovsky's novel '' How the Steel Was Tempered'' has been among the most popular works of Russian Socrealist literature. Some writers, such as Mikhail Bulgakov
Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov ( ; rus, links=no, Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков, p=mʲɪxɐˈil ɐfɐˈnasʲjɪvʲɪdʑ bʊlˈɡakəf; – 10 March 1940) was a Russian and Soviet novelist and playwright. His novel ''The M ...
, Andrei Platonov and Daniil Kharms were criticized and wrote with little or no hope of being published. Various ''émigré'' writers, such as poets Vladislav Khodasevich, Georgy Ivanov
Georgy Vladimirovich Ivanov (; – 26 August 1958) was a Russian poet and essayist of the Russian emigration between the 1930s and 1950s.
As a banker's son, Ivanov spent his young manhood in the elite circle of Russian golden youth. Vyacheslav Ivanov; novelists such as Ivan Shmelyov">Vyacheslav Ivanov (poet)">Vyacheslav Ivanov; novelists such as Ivan Shmelyov, Gaito Gazdanov,
Scholars typically use the term ''Old Russian literature'', in addition to the terms ''medieval Russian literature'' and ''early modern Russian literature'', or ''pre-Petrian literature'', to refer to Russian literature until the reforms of 
Literary works from this period were often written in the Russian recension of
The 
As Romanticism came to command the stage, the Age of Realism began to flourish as well. The first great Russian rich language novel was '' Dead Souls'' (1842) by
While the Silver Age is considered to be the development of the 19th-century Russian Golden Age literature tradition, some modernist and
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...
and Bunin, continued to write in exile. Some writers dared to oppose Soviet ideology, like Nobel Prize-winning novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Soviet and Russian author and Soviet dissidents, dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag pris ...
and Varlam Shalamov, who wrote about life in the gulag camps. The Khrushchev Thaw
The Khrushchev Thaw (, or simply ''ottepel'')William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, London: Free Press, 2004 is the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s when Political repression in the Soviet Union, repression and Censorship in ...
brought some fresh wind to literature and poetry became a mass cultural phenomenon. This "thaw" did not last long; in the 1970s, some of the most prominent authors were banned from publishing and prosecuted for their anti-Soviet sentiments.
The post-Soviet end of the 20th century was a difficult period for Russian literature, with few distinct voices. Among the most discussed authors of this period were novelists Victor Pelevin
Victor Olegovich Pelevin ( rus, Виктор Олегович Пелевин, p=ˈvʲiktər ɐˈlʲeɡəvʲɪtɕ pʲɪˈlʲevʲɪn; born 22 November 1962) is a Russian fiction writer. His novels include ''Omon Ra'' (1992), ''The Life of Insects' ...
and Vladimir Sorokin, and the poet Dmitri Prigov. In the 21st century, a new generation of Russian authors appeared, differing greatly from the postmodernist Russian prose of the late 20th century, which led critics to speak about "new realism".
Russian authors have significantly contributed to numerous literary genres. Russia has five Nobel Prize in Literature
The Nobel Prize in Literature, here meaning ''for'' Literature (), is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in ...
laureates. As of 2011, Russia was the fourth largest book producer in the world in terms of published titles. A popular folk saying claims Russians are "the world's most reading nation". As the American scholar Gary Saul Morson
Gary Saul Morson (born April 19, 1948) is an American literary critic and Slavist. He is particularly known for his scholarly work on the great Russian novelists Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. Mors ...
notes, "No country has ever valued literature more than Russia."
Medieval and early modern era
Scholars typically use the term ''Old Russian literature'', in addition to the terms ''medieval Russian literature'' and ''early modern Russian literature'', or ''pre-Petrian literature'', to refer to Russian literature until the reforms of Peter the Great
Peter I (, ;
– ), better known as Peter the Great, was the Sovereign, Tsar and Grand Prince of all Russia, Tsar of all Russia from 1682 and the first Emperor of Russia, Emperor of all Russia from 1721 until his death in 1725. He reigned j ...
, tying literary development to historical periodization. The term is generally used to refer to all forms of literary activity in what is often called ''Old Russia'' from the 11th to 17th centuries.
Literary works from this period were often written in the Russian recension of Church Slavonic
Church Slavonic is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia. The ...
with varying amounts of the Russian or more broadly East Slavic vernacular. At the same time, the native Old Russian vernacular was not only language of oral literature
Oral literature, orature, or folk literature is a genre of literature that is spoken or sung in contrast to that which is written, though much oral literature has been transcribed. There is no standard definition, as anthropologists have used v ...
, such as epic poems ('' bylina'') or folksongs, but it was also perfectly legitimate as written for practical purposes, such as decrees, laws (the '' Russkaya Pravda'', the 11th–12th century, and other codes), letters (for example, the unique pre-paper birch bark manuscripts, the 11th–15th centuries, in the Old Novgorod dialect), ambassadorial messages, "in chronicles or military tales whose language is fundamentally the Russian vernacular."
Old Russian "bookish" literature traces its beginnings to the introduction of Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic ( ) is the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language and the oldest extant written Slavonic language attested in literary sources. It belongs to the South Slavic languages, South Slavic subgroup of the ...
in Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus', also known as Kyivan Rus,.
* was the first East Slavs, East Slavic state and later an amalgam of principalities in Eastern Europe from the late 9th to the mid-13th century.John Channon & Robert Hudson, ''Penguin Historical At ...
as a liturgical language in the late 10th century following Christianization
Christianization (or Christianisation) is a term for the specific type of change that occurs when someone or something has been or is being converted to Christianity. Christianization has, for the most part, spread through missions by individu ...
. The East Slavs
The East Slavs are the most populous subgroup of the Slavs. They speak the East Slavic languages, and formed the majority of the population of the medieval state Kievan Rus', which they claim as their cultural ancestor.John Channon & Robert Huds ...
soon developed their own literature, and the oldest dated manuscript of Early Russian as well all-Slavic literature that has survived to this day is the Novgorod Codex or Novgorod Psalter written c. 1000, unearthed in 2000 at Veliky Novgorod
Veliky Novgorod ( ; , ; ), also known simply as Novgorod (), is the largest city and administrative centre of Novgorod Oblast, Russia. It is one of the oldest cities in Russia, being first mentioned in the 9th century. The city lies along the ...
, containing four wooden tablet pages filled with wax. Another earliest Russian book is the Ostromir Gospels written in 1056–1057, which belongs to the set of liturgical texts that were translated from other languages.
The main type of Old Russian historical literature were chronicles, most of them anonymous. The oldest one is the ''Primary Chronicle
The ''Primary Chronicle'', shortened from the common ''Russian Primary Chronicle'' (, commonly transcribed ''Povest' vremennykh let'' (PVL), ), is a Rus' chronicle, chronicle of Kievan Rus' from about 850 to 1110. It is believed to have been or ...
'' or ''Tale'' of Nestor the Chronicler (c. 1115). The oldest surviving manuscripts include the Laurentian Codex of 1377 and the Hypatian Codex dating to the 1420s. Anonymous works include '' The Tale of Igor's Campaign'' (a 12th century prose poem
Prose poetry is poetry written in prose form instead of verse form while otherwise deferring to poetic devices to make meaning.
Characteristics
Prose poetry is written as prose, without the line breaks associated with poetry. However, it make ...
masterpiece) and '' Praying of Daniel the Immured''. Hagiographies () formed a popular literary genre
A literary genre is a category of literature. Genres may be determined by List of narrative techniques, literary technique, Tone (literature), tone, Media (communication), content, or length (especially for fiction). They generally move from mor ...
in Old Russian literature. The first notable hagiographer was Nestor the Chronicler, who wrote about the lives of Boris and Gleb, the first saints of Kievan Rus', and the abbot Theodosius. The '' Life of Alexander Nevsky'' is a well-known example, which combines political realism and hagiographical ideals, and concentrates on the key events of Alexander Nevsky
Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky (; ; monastic name: ''Aleksiy''; 13 May 1221 – 14 November 1263) was Prince of Novgorod (1236–1240; 1241–1256; 1258–1259), Grand Prince of Kiev (1249–1263), and Grand Prince of Vladimir (1252–1263).
...
's political career. The earliest account of a pilgrimage is ''The Pilgrimage of the Abbot Daniel'', which records the journey of Daniel the Traveller to the Holy Land
The term "Holy Land" is used to collectively denote areas of the Southern Levant that hold great significance in the Abrahamic religions, primarily because of their association with people and events featured in the Bible. It is traditionall ...
. Complex epic works such as '' The Tale of the Destruction of Ryazan'' recall the havoc caused by the Mongol invasions. Other notable Russian literary works include '' Zadonschina'', ''Physiologist
Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a subdiscipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out chemical and ...
'', '' Synopsis'' and '' A Journey Beyond the Three Seas''. Medieval Russian literature had an overwhelmingly religious character and used an adapted form of the Church Slavonic language with many South Slavic elements.
In the 16th century, reflecting the political centralization and unification of the country under the tsar
Tsar (; also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar''; ; ; sr-Cyrl-Latn, цар, car) is a title historically used by Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word '' caesar'', which was intended to mean ''emperor'' in the Euro ...
, chronicles were updated and codified, the Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC; ;), also officially known as the Moscow Patriarchate (), is an autocephaly, autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Christian church. It has 194 dioceses inside Russia. The Primate (bishop), p ...
began issuing its decrees in the '' Stoglav'', and a large compilation called the '' Great Menaion Reader'' collected both the more modern polemical texts and the hagiographical and patristic legacy of Old Russia. The '' Book of Royal Degrees'' codified the cult of the tsar, the '' Domostroy'' laid down the rules for family life, and other texts such as the '' History of Kazan'' were used to justify the actions of the tsar. '' The Tale of Peter and Fevronia'' were among the original tales of this period, and Russian tsar Ivan IV wrote some of most original works of 16th-century Russian literature. The Time of Troubles
The Time of Troubles (), also known as Smuta (), was a period of political crisis in Tsardom of Russia, Russia which began in 1598 with the death of Feodor I of Russia, Feodor I, the last of the Rurikids, House of Rurik, and ended in 1613 wit ...
marked a turning point in Old Russian literature as both the church and state lost control over the written word, which are reflected in the texts of writers such as Avraamy Palitsyn who developed a literary technique for representing complex characters.
In the second half of the 17th century, the literature of Baroque
The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...
took shape, primarily due to the initiative of tsar Alexis of Russia
Alexei Mikhailovich (, ; – ), also known as Alexis, was Tsar of all Russia from 1645 until his death in 1676. He was the second Russian tsar from the House of Romanov.
He was the first tsar to sign laws on his own authority and his council ...
, who wanted to open a court theatre in 1672. Its director and playwright was Johann Gottfried Gregorii, a German-Russian pastor, who wrote, in particular, the 10-hour play
Play most commonly refers to:
* Play (activity), an activity done for enjoyment
* Play (theatre), a work of drama
Play may refer also to:
Computers and technology
* Google Play, a digital content service
* Play Framework, a Java framework
* P ...
''The Action of Artaxerxes''. The poetry and dramaturgy of Symeon of Polotsk and Demetrius of Rostov contributed to the development of the Russian version of the Baroque.
In the 17th century, when bookmen from the Kiev Academy arrived in Moscow, they brought with them a
culture heavily influenced by the educational system of the Polish Jesuits
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
. Mentioned Symeon of Polotsk created a new style which fused elements of ancient and contemporary Western European literature with traditional Russian rhetoric and the imperial ideology, which marked a key step in the Westernization of Russian literature. Syllabic poetry was also brought to Russia, and the work of Simeon of Polotsk was continued by Sylvester Medvedev and Karion Istomin.
''The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum''—an outstanding novelty autobiography
An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life, providing a personal narrative that reflects on the author's experiences, memories, and insights. This genre allows individuals to share thei ...
written by the one of leaders of the 17th-century religious dissidents Old Believers Avvakum
Avvakum Petrov (; 20 November 1620/1621 – 14 April 1682; also spelled Awakum) was a Russian Old Believer and protopope of the Kazan Cathedral on Red Square who led the opposition to Patriarch Nikon's reforms of the Russian Orthodox Church. H ...
—is considered masterpiece of pre-Petrian literature, which blends high Old Church Slavonic with low Russian vernacular and profanity without following literary canons.
Age of Enlightenment, 18th century
After taking the throne at the end of the 17th century, Peter the Great's influence on the Russian culture would extend far into the18th century
The 18th century lasted from 1 January 1701 (represented by the Roman numerals MDCCI) to 31 December 1800 (MDCCC). During the 18th century, elements of Enlightenment thinking culminated in the Atlantic Revolutions. Revolutions began to ch ...
. Peter's reign during the beginning of the 18th century initiated a series of modernizing changes in Russian literature. The reforms he implemented encouraged Russian artists and scientists to make innovations in their crafts and fields with the intention of creating an economy and culture comparable. Peter's example set a precedent for the remainder of the 18th century as Russian writers began to form clear ideas about the proper use and progression of the Russian language. Through their debates regarding versification of the Russian language and tone of Russian literature, the writers in the first half of the 18th century were able to lay foundation for the more poignant, topical work of the late 18th century.
Satirist
This is an incomplete list of writers, cartoonists and others known for involvement in satire – humorous social criticism. They are grouped by era and listed by year of birth. Included is a list of modern satires.
Early satirical authors
*Aes ...
Antiokh Dmitrievich Kantemir, 1708–1744, was one of the earliest Russian writers not only to praise the ideals of Peter I's reforms but the ideals of the growing Enlightenment movement in Europe. Kantemir's works regularly expressed his admiration for Peter, most notably in his epic dedicated to the emperor entitled ''Petrida''. More often, however, Kantemir indirectly praised Peter's influence through his satiric criticism of Russia's "superficiality and obscurantism", which he saw as manifestations of the backwardness Peter attempted to correct through his reforms. Kantemir honored this tradition of reform not only through his support for Peter, but by initiating a decade-long debate on the proper syllabic versification using the Russian language.
Vasily Kirillovich Trediakovsky, a poet, playwright, essayist, translator and contemporary to Antiokh Kantemir, also found himself deeply entrenched in Enlightenment conventions in his work with the Russian Academy of Sciences
The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation; and additional scientific and social units such ...
and his groundbreaking translations of French and classical works to the Russian language. A turning point in the course of Russian literature, his translation of Paul Tallemant's work ''Voyage to the Isle of Love'', was the first to use the Russian vernacular as opposed the formal and outdated Church-Slavonic. This introduction set a precedent for secular works to be composed in the vernacular, while sacred texts would remain in Church-Slavonic. However, his work was often incredibly theoretical and scholarly, focused on promoting the versification of the language with which he spoke.
While Trediakovsky's approach to writing is often described as highly erudite, the young writer and scholarly rival to Trediakovsky, Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov, 1717–1777, was dedicated to the styles of French classicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for a classical period, classical antiquity in the Western tradition, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. In its purest form, classicism is an aesthe ...
. Sumarokov's interest in the form of the 17th-century French literature
17th-century French literature was written throughout the '' Grand Siècle'' of France, spanning the reigns of Henry IV of France, the Regency of Marie de' Medici, Louis XIII of France, the Regency of Anne of Austria (and the civil war called ...
mirrored his devotion to the westernizing spirit of Peter the Great's age. Although he often disagreed with Trediakovsky, Sumarokov also advocated the use of simple, natural language in order to diversify the audience and make more efficient use of the Russian language. Like his colleagues and counterparts, Sumarokov extolled the legacy of Peter I, writing in his manifesto ''Epistle on Poetry'', "The great Peter hurls his thunder from the Baltic shores, the Russian sword glitters in all corners of the universe". Peter the Great's policies of westernization and displays of military prowess naturally attracted Sumarokov and his contemporaries.
Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, in particular, expressed his gratitude for and dedication to Peter's legacy in his unfinished ''Peter the Great'', Lomonosov's works often focused on themes of the awe-inspiring, grandeur nature, and was therefore drawn to Peter because of the magnitude of his military, architectural and cultural feats. In contrast to Sumarokov's devotion to simplicity, Lomonosov favored a belief in a hierarchy of literary styles divided into high, middle and low. This style facilitated Lomonosov's grandiose, high minded writing and use of both vernacular and Church-Slavonic.
The influence of Peter I and debates over the function and form of literature as it related to the Russian language in the first half of the 18th century set a stylistic precedent for the writers during the reign of Catherine the Great
Catherine II. (born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst; 2 May 172917 November 1796), most commonly known as Catherine the Great, was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. She came to power after overthrowing her husband, Peter I ...
in the second half of the century. However, the themes and scopes of the works these writers produced were often more poignant, political and controversial. Ippolit Bogdanovich's narrative poem ''Dushenka'' (1778) is rare sample of the Rococo
Rococo, less commonly Roccoco ( , ; or ), also known as Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and dramatic style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpte ...
style, erotic light poetry
Light poetry or light verse is poetry that attempts to be humorous. Light poems are usually brief, can be on a frivolous or serious subject, and often feature word play including puns, adventurous rhyme, and heavy alliteration. Nonsense poetry i ...
in Russia. Alexander Nikolayevich Radishchev, for example, shocked the Russian public with his depictions of the socio-economic condition of the serfs
Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery. It developed dur ...
. Empress Catherine II condemned this portrayal, forcing Radishchev into exile in Siberia
Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...
.
Others, however, picked topics less offensive to the autocrat. the historian and writer Nikolay Karamzin, 1766–1826, the key figure of literary sentimentalism in Russia, for example, is known for his advocacy of Russian writers adopting traits in the poetry and prose like a heightened sense of emotion and physical vanity, considered to be feminine at the time as well as supporting the cause of female Russian writers. Karamzin's call for male writers to write with femininity was not in accordance with the Enlightenment ideals of reason and theory, considered masculine attributes. His works were thus not universally well received; however, they did reflect in some areas of society a growing respect for, or at least ambivalence toward, a female ruler in Catherine the Great. This concept heralded an era of regarding female characteristics in writing as an abstract concept linked with attributes of frivolity, vanity and pathos.
Some writers, on the other hand, were more direct in their praise for Catherine II. Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin, famous for his odes, often dedicated his poems to Empress Catherine II. In contrast to most of his contemporaries, Derzhavin was highly devoted to his state; he served in the military, before rising to various roles in Catherine II's government, including secretary to the Empress and Minister of Justice. Unlike those who took after the grand style of Mikhail Lomonosov and Alexander Sumarokov, Derzhavin was concerned with the minute details of his subjects.
Denis Fonvizin, an author primarily of comedy, approached the subject of the Russian nobility
The Russian nobility or ''dvoryanstvo'' () arose in the Middle Ages. In 1914, it consisted of approximately 1,900,000 members, out of a total population of 138,200,000. Up until the February Revolution of 1917, the Russian noble estates staffed ...
with an angle of critique. Fonvizin felt the nobility should be held to the standards they were under the reign of Peter the Great, during which the quality of devotion to the state was rewarded. His works criticized the current system for rewarding the nobility without holding them responsible for the duties they once performed. Using satire and comedy, Fonvizin supported a system of nobility in which the elite were rewarded based upon personal merit rather than the hierarchal favoritism that was rampant during Catherine the Great's reign.
Golden Age
The 19th century
The 19th century began on 1 January 1801 (represented by the Roman numerals MDCCCI), and ended on 31 December 1900 (MCM). It was the 9th century of the 2nd millennium. It was characterized by vast social upheaval. Slavery was Abolitionism, ...
is traditionally referred to as the "Golden Era" of Russian literature.
The period of Romantic literature saw the flowering of poetic talent, in particular; the names of Vasily Zhukovsky and his protégé Alexander Pushkin
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin () was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era.Basker, Michael. Pushkin and Romanticism. In Ferber, Michael, ed., ''A Companion to European Romanticism''. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. He is consid ...
came to the fore. Pushkin is credited with crystallizing the literary Russian language and introducing a new level of artistry to Russian literature. His best-known work is a pre-realistic novel in verse, ''Eugene Onegin
''Eugene Onegin, A Novel in Verse'' (, Reforms of Russian orthography, pre-reform Russian: Евгеній Онѣгинъ, романъ въ стихахъ, ) is a novel in verse written by Alexander Pushkin. ''Onegin'' is considered a classic of ...
'' (1833). Other poets important to the movement include Konstantin Batyushkov, Pyotr Vyazemsky, Yevgeny Baratynsky
Yevgeny Abramovich Baratynsky ( rus, Евге́ний Абра́мович Бараты́нский, p=jɪvˈɡʲenʲɪj ɐˈbraməvʲɪtɕ bərɐˈtɨnskʲɪj, a=Yevgyeniy Abramovich Baratynskiy.ru.vorb.oga; 11 July 1844) was lauded by Alexande ...
, Fyodor Tyutchev
Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev (, ; – ) was a Russian poet and diplomat.
Ancestry
Tyutchev was born into an old Russian noble family in the Ovstug family estate near Bryansk (modern-day Zhukovsky District, Bryansk Oblast of Russia). His f ...
and Dmitry Venevitinov, along with the novelists Antony Pogorelsky, Alexander Bestuzhev and "Russian Hoffmann" Vladimir Odoyevsky. Tyutchev is best known for the following verse:
An entire new generation of Romantic poets and novelists followed in Pushkin's steps. Mikhail Lermontov
Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov ( , ; rus, Михаи́л Ю́рьевич Ле́рмонтов, , mʲɪxɐˈil ˈjʉrʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ˈlʲerməntəf, links=yes; – ) was a Russian Romanticism, Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called ...
wrote the narrative poem ''Demon
A demon is a malevolent supernatural entity. Historically, belief in demons, or stories about demons, occurs in folklore, mythology, religion, occultism, and literature; these beliefs are reflected in Media (communication), media including
f ...
'' in 1829–39, which chronicled the love of a Byronic Demon for a mortal woman, as well as ''A Hero of Our Time
''A Hero of Our Time'' ( rus, Герой нашего времени, links=1, r=Gerój nášego vrémeni, p=ɡʲɪˈroj ˈnaʂɨvə ˈvrʲemʲɪnʲɪ) is a novel by Mikhail Lermontov, written in 1839, published in 1840, and revised in 1841.
It ...
'' (1841), which is often considered to be the first Russian psychological novel. Aleksey K. Tolstoy and Afanasy Fet were also significant.
As Romanticism came to command the stage, the Age of Realism began to flourish as well. The first great Russian rich language novel was '' Dead Souls'' (1842) by Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol; ; (; () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright of Ukrainian origin.
Gogol used the Grotesque#In literature, grotesque in his writings, for example, in his works "The Nose (Gogol short story), ...
. The realistic natural school of fiction is said to have begun with the works of Ivan Goncharov, mainly remembered for his novel '' Oblomov'' (1859), as well as Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev ( ; rus, links=no, Иван Сергеевич ТургеневIn Turgenev's day, his name was written ., p=ɪˈvan sʲɪrˈɡʲe(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ tʊrˈɡʲenʲɪf; – ) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poe ...
. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in both Russian literature, Russian and world literature, and many of his works are consider ...
and Leo Tolstoy
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy Tolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; ,Throughout Tolstoy's whole life, his name was written as using Reforms of Russian orthography#The post-revolution re ...
soon became internationally renowned, to the point that scholars, such as F. R. Leavis, have frequently described them as among the greatest novelists of all time. Tolstoy's Christian anarchism
Christian anarchism is a Christian movement in political theology that claims anarchism is inherent in Christianity and the Gospels. It is grounded in the belief that there is only one source of authority to which Christians are ultimately answ ...
can be seen in the following quote:
Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin is known for his satirical chronicle '' The History of a Town'' (1870) and the family saga '' The Golovlyov Family'' (1880), which are considered his masterpieces. Nikolai Leskov
Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov (; – ) was a Russian novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and journalist, who also wrote under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky. Praised for his unique writing style and innovative experiments in form, and held ...
is best remembered for his shorter fiction and for his (together with Pavel Melnikov) unique ''skaz
Skaz ( rus, сказ, p=ˈskas) is a Russian oral form of narrative. The word comes from '' skazátʹ'', "to tell", and is also related to such words as ''rasskaz'', "short story" and ''skazka'', "fairy tale". The speech makes use of dialect and sl ...
'' techniques, namely oral form of narrative stylization. Late in the century Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; ; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, widely considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his b ...
emerged as a master of the short story as well as a leading international dramatist.
Other important 19th-century developments included Sergey Aksakov's semi-autobiographical writings; the father of Russian social realism and left-wing poetry school, known for the sharp epic poem '' Who Can Be Happy and Free in Russia?'' Nikolay Nekrasov; the fabulist Ivan Krylov; the precursor to Naturalism Aleksey Pisemsky; non-fiction writers such as the critic Vissarion Belinsky and the political reformer Alexander Herzen; playwrights such as Aleksandr Griboyedov, Aleksandr Ostrovsky, Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin and the satirist Kozma Prutkov (a collective pen name).
Silver Age
The 1890s and the beginning of the 20th century ranks as the Silver Age of Russian poetry. Well-known poets of the period include: Alexander Blok, Sergei Yesenin, Valery Bryusov, Konstantin Balmont, Mikhail Kuzmin, Igor Severyanin, Sasha Chorny, Nikolay Gumilyov, Maximilian Voloshin, Innokenty Annensky, Zinaida Gippius. The poets most often associated with the "Silver Age" areAnna Akhmatova
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko rus, А́нна Андре́евна Горе́нко, p=ˈanːə ɐnˈdrʲe(j)ɪvnə ɡɐˈrʲɛnkə, a=Anna Andreyevna Gorenko.ru.oga, links=yes; , . ( – 5 March 1966), better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova,. ...
, Marina Tsvetaeva
Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva ( rus, Марина Ивановна Цветаева, p=mɐˈrʲinə ɪˈvanəvnə tsvʲɪˈta(j)ɪvə, links=yes; 31 August 1941) was a Russian poet. Her work is some of the most well-known in twentieth-century Russ ...
, Osip Mandelstam, and Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (30 May 1960) was a Russian and Soviet poet, novelist, composer, and literary translator.
Composed in 1917, Pasternak's first book of poems, ''My Sister, Life'', was published in Berlin in 1922 and soon became an imp ...
.
The Russian symbolism was the first Silver Age development in the 1890s. It arose enough separately from West European symbolism, emphasizing mysticism of Sophiology and defamiliarization. Its most significant figures included philosopher and poet Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900), poets and writers Valery Bryusov (1873–1924), Fyodor Sologub (1863–1927), Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866–1949), Konstantin Balmont (1867–1942), and figures of the new wave generation Alexander Blok (1880–1921) with Andrei Bely
Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev (, ; – 8 January 1934), better known by the pen name Andrei Bely or Biely, was a Russian novelist, Symbolist poet, theorist and literary critic. He was a committed anthroposophist and follower of Rudolf Steiner. Hi ...
(1880–1934).
'' New peasant poets'' was the conditional collective name of a group of peasant origin and country poetry trend ( Nikolai Klyuev, Pyotr Oreshin, Alexander Shiryaevets, Sergei Klychkov, Sergei Yesenin).
While the Silver Age is considered to be the development of the 19th-century Russian Golden Age literature tradition, some modernist and avant-garde
In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...
poets tried to overturn it. Most prominent their movements: the Cubo-Futurism with practice of '' zaum'', the experimental visual and sound poetry (David Burliuk
David Davidovich Burliuk (; 21 July 1882 – 15 January 1967) was a Russian poet, artist and publicist of Ukrainian origin associated with the Futurism (art), Futurist and Neo-Primitivist movements. Burliuk has been described as "the father of ...
, Velimir Khlebnikov, Aleksei Kruchenykh, Nikolai Aseyev, Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky ( – 14 April 1930) was a Russian poet, playwright, artist, and actor. During his early, Russian Revolution, pre-Revolution period leading into 1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Ru ...
); the Ego-Futurism based on a personality cult ( Igor Severyanin and Vasilisk Gnedov); and the Acmeist poetry, a Russian modernist school, which emerged ca. 1911 and to symbols preferred direct expression through exact images (Anna Akhmatova
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko rus, А́нна Андре́евна Горе́нко, p=ˈanːə ɐnˈdrʲe(j)ɪvnə ɡɐˈrʲɛnkə, a=Anna Andreyevna Gorenko.ru.oga, links=yes; , . ( – 5 March 1966), better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova,. ...
, Nikolay Gumilev, Georgiy Ivanov, Mikhail Kuzmin, Osip Mandelstam).
Though the Silver Age is famous mostly for its poetry, it produced some first-rate novelists and short-story writers, such as naturalist
Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...
Aleksandr Kuprin, realists Nobel Prize winner Ivan Bunin and Vikenty Veresaev, pioneer of Russian expressionism
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
Leonid Andreyev, symbolists Fedor Sologub, Aleksey Remizov, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Andrei Bely
Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev (, ; – 8 January 1934), better known by the pen name Andrei Bely or Biely, was a Russian novelist, Symbolist poet, theorist and literary critic. He was a committed anthroposophist and follower of Rudolf Steiner. Hi ...
, Alexander Belyaev, and Yevgeny Zamyatin, though most of them wrote poetry as well as prose.
In 1915/16, the school of Russian Formalism, wary of the futurists and highly influential for the global theory of literary criticism and poetics, appeared; its programmatic article ''The Resurrection of the Word'' by the scholar and writer Viktor Shklovsky
Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky ( rus, Ви́ктор Бори́сович Шкло́вский, p=ˈʂklofskʲɪj; – 6 December 1984) was a Russian and Soviet literary theorist, critic, writer, and pamphleteer. He is one of the major figures asso ...
(1893–1984) was published in 1914, and the peak of activity occurred in the post-revolutionary '20s.
An integral part of the literature of the Silver Age is Russian philosophy
Russian philosophy is a collective name for the philosophical heritage of Russian thinkers.
Historiography
In historiography, there is no consensus regarding the origins of Russian philosophy, its periodization and its cultural significance. Th ...
, which reached its peak at this time (see works of Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev (; ; – 24 March 1948) was a Russian Empire, Russian philosopher, theologian, and Christian existentialism, Christian existentialist who emphasized the existentialism, existential spiritual significance of Pe ...
, Pavel Florensky, Semyon Frank, Nikolay Lossky, Vasily Rozanov, and others).
Soviet era
Early post-Revolutionary era
The first years of the Soviet regime after theOctober Revolution
The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...
of 1917, featured a proliferation of Russian avant-garde
The Russian avant-garde was a large, influential wave of avant-garde modern art that flourished in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, approximately from 1890 to 1930—although some have placed its beginning as early as 1850 and its e ...
literary groups, and proletarian literature receive official support. The Imaginists were post-Revolution poetic movement, similar to English-language Imagists
Imagism was a movement in early-20th-century poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. It is considered to be the first organized literary modernism, modernist literary movement in the English language. Imagism has bee ...
, that created poetry based on sequences of arresting and uncommon images. The major figures include Sergei Yesenin, Anatoly Marienhof, and Rurik Ivnev. Another important movement was the Oberiu (1927–1930s), which included the most famous Russian absurdist Daniil Kharms (1905–1942), Konstantin Vaginov (1899–1934), Alexander Vvedensky (1904–1941) and Nikolay Zabolotsky (1903–1958). Other famous authors experimenting with language included the novelists Boris Pilnyak (1894–1938), Yuri Olesha (1899–1960), Andrei Platonov (1899–1951) and Artyom Vesyoly (1899–1938), the short-story writers Isaak Babel (1894–1940) and Mikhail Zoshchenko (1894–1958). The OPOJAZ group of literary critics, a part of Russian formalism school, was founded in 1916 in close connection with Russian Futurism
Russian Futurism is the broad term for a movement of Russian poets and artists who adopted the principles of Filippo Marinetti's "Futurist Manifesto, Manifesto of Futurism", which espoused the rejection of the past, and a celebration of speed, ...
. Two of its members also produced influential literary works, namely Viktor Shklovsky
Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky ( rus, Ви́ктор Бори́сович Шкло́вский, p=ˈʂklofskʲɪj; – 6 December 1984) was a Russian and Soviet literary theorist, critic, writer, and pamphleteer. He is one of the major figures asso ...
, whose numerous books (''A Sentimental Journey'' and ''Zoo, or Letters Not About Love'', both 1923) defy genre in that they present a novel mix of narration, autobiography, and aesthetic as well as social commentary, and Yury Tynyanov (1893–1943), who used his knowledge of Russia's literary history to produce a set of historical novels mainly set in the Pushkin era (e.g., '' Lieutenant Kijé'', ''Pushkin'' in three parts, 1935–43, and others).
Following the establishment of Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...
rule, Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky ( – 14 April 1930) was a Russian poet, playwright, artist, and actor. During his early, Russian Revolution, pre-Revolution period leading into 1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Ru ...
worked on interpreting the facts of the new reality. His works, such as "Ode to the Revolution" and "Left March" (both 1918), brought innovations to poetry. In "Left March", Mayakovsky calls for a struggle against the enemies of the Russian Revolution. The poem ''150 000 000
''150 000 000'' (Russian: ''Sto pyat'desyat millionov'') is a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky written in 1919–1920 and first published in April 1921 in poetry, 1921 by GIZ (Gosizdat) Publishers, originally anonymously. The poem, hailing the 150-mill ...
'' (1921) discusses the leading role played by the masses in the revolution. In the poem '' Vladimir Ilyich Lenin'' (1924), Mayakovsky looks at the life and work at the leader of Russia's revolution and depicts them against a broad historical background. In the poem '' All Right!'' (1927), Mayakovsky writes about socialist
Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...
society as the "springtime of humanity". Mayakovsky was instrumental in producing a new type of poetry in which politics played a major part.
One of the most popular Soviet poets during the 1920s was Nikolai Tikhonov
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Tikhonov ( – 1 June 1997) was a Soviet Russian-Ukrainian statesman during the Cold War. He served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1980 to 1985, and as a First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, ...
(1896–1979), a future important figure of Stalinist era, well-known for his ''Ballad About Nails'', as follows:
''Émigré'' writers
Usually, Russian ''émigré'' literature is understood as the works of thewhite émigré
White Russian émigrés were Russians who emigrated from the territory of the former Russian Empire in the wake of the Russian Revolution (1917) and Russian Civil War (1917–1923), and who were in opposition to the revolutionary Bolshevik com ...
, namely the first post-Revolutionary wave, although in the broad sense of the word, it also includes Soviet dissidents of the late years through the 1980s. Meanwhile, émigré writers, such as poets Georgy Ivanov
Georgy Vladimirovich Ivanov (; – 26 August 1958) was a Russian poet and essayist of the Russian emigration between the 1930s and 1950s.
As a banker's son, Ivanov spent his young manhood in the elite circle of Russian golden youth.
ed. and trans. by Anatoly Kudryavitsky, Thirsk, UK: Smokestack Books, 2020, . Modernist and
Toronto Slavic Quarterly. and many of them were adapted into film or TV in the 1970s and 1980s. Village Prose is a genre that conveys nostalgic descriptions of rural life. Valentin Rasputin's 1976 novel, ''Proshchaniye s Matyoroy'' (''Farewell to Matyora'') depicted a village faced with destruction to make room for a hydroelectric plant.
Archive.org
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Russian Realisms: Literature and Painting, 1840–1890
'. NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. DeKalb, Il: Northern Illinois University Press. * * * * * Grigoryan, B. (2018).
Noble Subjects: The Russian Novel and the Gentry, 1762–1861
'. NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. DeKalb, Il: Northern Illinois University Press. * Reprint Routledge, 2021. * Reprint: Routledge, 2021. * * * * * * Via
''Accursed Poets: Dissident Poetry from Soviet Russia 1960–80''
Ed. and trans. by Anatoly Kudryavitsky. Thirsk, UK: Smokestack Books, 2020. . * ''An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature: Two Centuries of Dual Identity in Prose and Poetry, 1801–2001'' 2 vols. Ed., selec., and cotrans. with introd. essays by Maxim D. Shrayer. Armonk, NY; London: M.E. Sharpe, 2007. .
''Anthology of Russian Short Stories from Classical to Modern''
Comp. by Galina Bazhanova. Trans. from the Russian. 2 vols. Moscow: Raduga Pub.; London & Wellingborough: Collets, 1985. .
Vol. 1
Vol. 2
* ''An Anthology of Russian Women's Writing, 1777–1992''. Ed. by Catriona Kelly. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. .
''A Bilingual Collection of Russian Short Stories''
Ed. with introd. by Maurice Friedberg. 2 vols. New York: Random House, 1964–65.
''The Blue Lagoon Anthology of Modern Russian Poetry''
Ed. by Konstantin K. Kuzminsky and Gregory L. Kovalev; Institute of Modern Russian Culture at Blue Lagoon, Texas. vols., 9 books.Newtonville, Ma: Oriental Research Partners, 1980–1986.
A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections by Isabel Florence Hapgood
* ''The Literature of Eighteenth-Century Russia: An Anthology of Russian Literary Materials of the Age of Classicism and the Enlightenment from the Reign of Peter the Great, 1689–1725, to the Reign of Alexander I, 1801–1825''. 2 vols. Ed. and trans. by Harold B. Segel. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1967. * ''Mass Culture in Soviet Russia: Tales, Poems, Songs, Movies, Plays, and Folklore, 1917–1953'' Ed. by James von Geldern and Richard Stites. Bloomington, In.: Indiana University Press, 1995. .
''Masterpieces of the Russian drama''
Selec. and ed. with introd. by George Rapall Noyes. 2 vols. New York: Dover Pub., 1960–1961 933br>Vol. 1
Vol. 2
''Medieval Russia's Epics, Chronicles, and Tales''
Ed., trans. with introd. by Serge A. Zenkovsky. Rev. ed. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1974 963 * ''A Night in the Nabokov Hotel: 20 Contemporary Poets from Russia''. Introd. and trans. by Anatoly Kudryavitsky. Dublin: Dedalus Press, 2006. . * ''The Penguin Book of Russian Verse''. Introd. and ed. by Dimitri Obolensky. Rev. ed. London: Penguin Books, 1965 962 * ''Post-war Russian Poetry''. Ed. with introd. by Daniel Weissbort. London: Penguin Books, 1974. .
''Russian Poetry under the Tsars: An Anthology''
Comp. and trans. by Burton Raffel. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1971. .
''Russian Silver Age Poetry: Texts And Contexts''
Ed. by Sibelan E. S. Forrester and Martha M. F. Kelly. Boston, Mi: Academic Studies Press, 2015. . * ''The Silver Age of Russian Culture: An Anthology''. Ed. by Carl and Ellendea Proffer. Ann Arbor, Mi: Ardis, 1975. . * Third Wave: The New Russian Poetry Ed. by Kent Johnson and Stephen M. Ashby. Introd. by Andrew Wachtel and Alexei Parshchikov. Afterword by Mikhail Epstein. Ann Arbor, Mi: University of Michigan Press, 1992. . * ''Two Centuries of Russian Verse: An Anthology from Lomonosov to Voznesensky''. Ed. with introd. by Avrahm Yarmolinsky. Trans. from Russian by Babette Deutsch. New York: Random House, 1966. * ''Unknown Russian Theater: An Anthology''. Ed. and trans. by Michael Green and Jerome Katsell. Vol. 1. Ann Arbor, Mi: Ardis, 1991. . * ''Utopias: Russian Modernist Texts, 1905—1940''. Ed. and trans. by Catriona Kelly. London: Penguin Books, 1999. * ''War & Peace: Contemporary Russian Prose''. Glas New Russian Writing, 40. Moscow: Glas, 2006. Ed. by Natasha Perova and Joanne Turnbull. Trans. by Joanne Turnbull. . * ''Worlds Apart: An Anthology of Russian Fantasy and Science Fiction'' Ed. and comm. by Alexander Levitsky. Trans. by Alexander Levitsky and Martha T. Kitchen. New York: Duckworth Overlook, 2007. . * ''Во Весь Голос n a Loud Voice Soviet Poetry'' n Russian with English Notes & Voc Ed. by Vladimir Ognev. Moscow: Progress Pub., 1965.
Fundamental Digital Library of Russian Literature and Folklore
(in English and Russian) * — site on Translations and Publications of Russian literature
Russian Poetry in Translations
at Reverses.com
Soviet Literature Resource
at SovLit.net (in English)
National Audio Fund
— a huge collection of radio plays and literary readings of past years at Old Radio (in Russian)
by the Slavic Reference Service
Search Russian Books
at Bookle.ru (in Russian)
* * ttps://www.rvb.ru Russian Virtual Library(in Russian)
Maxim Moshkov's E-library of Russian literature
(in Russian) {{DEFAULTSORT:Russian Literature
Vyacheslav Ivanov, Vladislav Khodasevich, surrealism">surrealist
Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...
Boris Poplavsky (1903–1935), and members of the 1920s–50s Paris Note (French: ''Note parisienne'') Russian poetry movement (Georgy Adamovich, Igor Chinnov, George Ivask, Anatoly Shteiger, Lidia Tcherminskaia); novelists such as M. Ageyev, Mark Aldanov, Gaito Gazdanov, Pyotr Krasnov, Aleksandr Kuprin, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Aleksey Remizov, Ivan Shmelyov
Ivan Sergeyevich Shmelyov (, also spelled ''Shmelev'' and ''Chmelov''; – 24 June 1950) was a Russian writer best known for his idyllic recreations of a pre-Russian Revolution, Revolutionary past spent in the merchant district of Moscow. ...
, George Grebenstchikoff
George Dmitrievich Grebenstchikoff (; 6 May 4 April Old Style1883 – 11 January 1964) was a writer and professor of Russian literature.
Personal life
Grebenstchikoff was born in Nikolayevsky Rudnik, Tomsk Governorate, Russian Empire (now i ...
, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...
, and English-speaking Ayn Rand
Alice O'Connor (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum; , 1905March 6, 1982), better known by her pen name Ayn Rand (), was a Russian-born American writer and philosopher. She is known for her fiction and for developing a philosophical system which s ...
; and short-story Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...
-winning writer and poet Ivan Bunin, continued to write in exile. During his emigration Bunin wrote his most significant works, such as his only autobiographical novel '' The Life of Arseniev'' (1927–1939) and short story cycle '' Dark Avenues'' (1937–1944). An example of long prose form is Grebenstchikoff's epic novel ''The Churaevs'' in six volumes (1922–1937) in which he described life of the Siberians
The Siberians or Siberiaks (, ) are the majority inhabitants of Siberia, as well as the Ethnic group, subgroup or ethnographic group of the Russians.
As demonym
The demonym ''Siberian'' can be restricted to either the Russian Siberiaks or ...
. While the realists Bunin, Shmelyov and Grebenstchikoff wrote about the pre-revolutionary Russia, life of the émigrés was depicted in modernist Nabokov's '' Mary'' (1926)'' and The Gift'' (1938), Gazdanov's ''An Evening with Claire'' (1929) and ''The Specter of Alexander Wolf'' (1948) and Georgy Ivanov's novel ''Disintegration of the Atom'' (1938).
Stalinist era
In the 1930s, Socialist realism became the predominant official trend in the Soviet Union. Writers like those of the Serapion Brothers group (1921–), who insisted on the right of an author to write independently of political ideology, were forced by authorities to reject their views and accept socialist realist principles. Some 1930s writers, such as Osip Mandelstam, Daniil Kharms, leader of Oberiu, Leonid Dobychin,Mikhail Bulgakov
Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov ( ; rus, links=no, Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков, p=mʲɪxɐˈil ɐfɐˈnasʲjɪvʲɪdʑ bʊlˈɡakəf; – 10 March 1940) was a Russian and Soviet novelist and playwright. His novel ''The M ...
, author of '' The White Guard'' (1923) and ''The Master and Margarita
''The Master and Margarita'' () is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, written in the Soviet Union between 1928 and 1940. A censored version, with several chapters cut by editors, was published posthumously in ''Moscow (magazine), Moscow'' magazine in ...
'' (1928–1940), and Andrei Platonov, author of novels '' Chevengur'' (1928) and '' The Foundation Pit'' (1930) were attacked by the official critics as "formalists," "naturalists" and ideological enemies and wrote with little or no hope of being published. Such remarkable writers as Isaac Babel, Boris Pilnyak, Nikolai Klyuev, Sergey Klychkov, Pyotr Oreshin and Artyom Vesyoly, who continued to publish their works but could not get used to the socrealist principles by the end of the 1930s, were executed on fabricated charges, and Osip Mandelstam, Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky died in prison.
The return from emigration such famous authors as Aleksey Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (; ), was a Russian and Soviet writer and proponent of socialism. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Before his success as an aut ...
, and Ilya Ehrenburg was a major propaganda victory for the Soviets.
After his return to Russia Maxim Gorky was proclaimed by the Soviet authorities as "the founder of Socialist Realism". His novel ''Mother'' (1906), which Gorky himself considered one of his biggest failures, inspired proletarian writers to found the socrealist movement. Gorky defined socialist realism as the "realism of people who are rebuilding the world" and pointed out that it looks at the past "from the heights of the future's goals", although he defined it not as a strict style (which is studied in Andrei Sinyavsky
Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky (; 8 October 1925 – 25 February 1997) was a Russian writer and Soviet dissident known as a defendant in the Sinyavsky–Daniel trial of 1965.
Sinyavsky was a literary critic for ''Novy Mir'' and wrote works critic ...
's essay ''On Socialist Realism''), but as a label for the "union of writers of styles", who write for one purpose, to help in the development of the new man in socialist society. Gorky became the initiator of creating the Writer's Union, a state organization, intended to unite the socrealist writers. Despite the official reputation, Gorky's post-revolutionary works, such as the novel ''The Life of Klim Samgin
''The Life of Klim Samgin'' () is a four-volume novel written by Maxim Gorky from 1925 up to his death in 1936. It is Gorky's most ambitious work, intended to depict "all the classes, all the trends, all the tendencies, all the hell-like commotio ...
'' (1925–1936) can't be defined as socrealist, but modernist
Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
.
Andrei Bely
Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev (, ; – 8 January 1934), better known by the pen name Andrei Bely or Biely, was a Russian novelist, Symbolist poet, theorist and literary critic. He was a committed anthroposophist and follower of Rudolf Steiner. Hi ...
(1880–1934), author of '' Petersburg'' (1913/1922), a well-known modernist writer, also was a member of Writer's Union and tried to become a "true" socrealist by writing a series of articles and making ideological revisions to his memoirs, and he also planned to begin a study of Socialist realism. However, he continued writing with his unique techniques. Although he was actively published during his lifetime, his major works would not be reissued until the end of the 1970s.
Valentin Kataev
Valentin Petrovich Kataev (; also spelled Katayev or Kataiev; – 12 April 1986) was a Soviet writer and editor who managed to create penetrating works discussing post-revolutionary social conditions without running afoul of the demands of ...
, who began publishing before the Revolution, is the author of the first Soviet "industrial novel" '' Time, Forward!'' (1932) and the classic 1946 short story ''Our Father''.
Mikhail Sholokhov
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov ( rus, Михаил Александрович Шолохов, p=ˈʂoləxəf; – 21 February 1984) was a Russian novelist and winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is known for writing about life ...
(1905–1984) was one of the most significant figures in the official Soviet literature. His main socrealist work is ''Virgin Soil Upturned'' (1935), a novel in which Sholokhov glorifies the collectivization. However, his unique for period best-known and the most significant literary achievement is '' Quiet Flows the Don'' (1928–40), an epic novel which realistically depicts the life of Don Cossacks
Don Cossacks (, ) or Donians (, ), are Cossacks who settled along the middle and lower Don River (Russia), Don. Historically, they lived within the former Don Cossack Host (, ), which was either an independent or an autonomous democratic rep ...
during the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and Russian Civil War.
Nikolai Ostrovsky's novel '' How the Steel Was Tempered'' (1932–1934) has been among the most popular and standard works of literary socrealism, with tens of millions of copies printed in many languages around the world. In China, various versions of the book have sold more than 10 million copies. In Russia more than 35 million copies of the book are in circulation. The book is a fictionalized autobiography of Ostrovsky's life: he had a difficult working-class childhood, became a Komsomol member in July 1919 and volunteered to join the Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...
. The novel's protagonist, Pavel Korchagin, represented the "young hero" of Russian literature: he is dedicated to his political causes, which help him to overcome his tragedies. Alexander Fadeyev (1901–1956) was also a well-known Socialist realism writer, the chairman of the official Writer's Union during Stalinist era. His novel ''The Rout'' (1927) deals with the partisan struggle in Russia's Far East during the Russian Revolution and Civil War of 1917–1922. Fadeyev described the theme of this novel as one of a revolution significantly transforming the masses.
In the 1930s, Konstantin Paustovsky (1892–1968), an influenced by neo-Romantic
The term neo-romanticism is used to cover a variety of movements in philosophy, literature, music, painting, and architecture, as well as social movements, that exist after and incorporate elements from the era of Romanticism.
It has been used ...
works of Alexander Grin
Aleksandr Stepanovich Grinevsky (better known by his pen name, Aleksander Green / Grin (spelling varies in non-Russian literature), rus, Александр Грин, p=ɐlʲɪˈksandr ɡrʲin, a=Ru-Aleksandr Grin.ogg, 23 August 1880 – 8 July 1 ...
master of landscape prose, a singer of the Meshchera Lowlands, and already in the post-Stalin years a multiple nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature, joined the ranks of leading Soviet writers.fantastic.
Novelist and playwright Leonid Leonov, despite the fact that he was considered by authorities to be one of the pillars of socialist realism, during the Stalin years, created a forbidden novella about emigrats ''Eugenua Ivanovna'' (1938), a play about the Chekist purges, ''The Snowstorm'' (1940), briefly permitted and then also forbidden, and a novel, ''The Russian Forest'' (1953), where ecological issues were perhaps touched upon for the first time in Soviet literature. Over the course of forty years (1940–1994), he wrote a huge philosophical and mystical novel, "The Pyramid", which was finished and published in the year of the author's death.
The cult figures of the literature of the Second World War were the war poet
War poetry is poetry on the topic of war. While the term is applied especially to works of the First World War, the term can be applied to poetry about any war, including Homer's ''Iliad'', from around the 8th century BC as well as poetry of th ...
s Konstantin Simonov, arguably most famous for his 1941 poem '' Wait for Me'', and Aleksandr Tvardovsky, author of the long poem " Vasily Terkin" (1941–45), chief editor of the literary magazine ''Novy Mir
''Novy Mir'' (, ) is a Russian-language monthly literary magazine.
History
''Novy Mir'' has been published in Moscow since January 1925. It was supposed to be modelled on the popular pre-Soviet literary magazine ''Mir Bozhy'' ("God's World"), w ...
''. Poet Yulia Drunina known for writing about women at war.
Boris Polevoy is the author of the ''Story About a True Man'' (1946), based on the life of World War II fighter pilot Aleksey Maresyev, which was an immensely popular.
Late Soviet era
After the end of World War II Nobel Prize-winningBoris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (30 May 1960) was a Russian and Soviet poet, novelist, composer, and literary translator.
Composed in 1917, Pasternak's first book of poems, ''My Sister, Life'', was published in Berlin in 1922 and soon became an imp ...
(1890–1960) wrote a novel ''Doctor Zhivago'' (1945–1955). Publication of the novel in Italy caused a scandal, as the Soviet authorities forced Pasternak to renounce his 1958 Nobel Prize and denounced as an internal White emigre and a Fascist fifth columnist. Pasternak was expelled from the Writer's Union.
The majority of members of the Writers' Union ( Georgi Markov, Anatoly Rybakov, Aleksandr Chakovsky, Sergey Zalygin, Anatoly Kalinin, Daniil Granin, Yuri Nagibin, Vladimir Tendryakov, Arkady Lvov (before his emigration), Chinghiz Aitmatov, Anatoly Ivanov, Pyotr Proskurin, Boris Yekimov, among many others) continued to work in the mainstream of Socialist Realism, not without criticizing certain phenomena of Soviet reality, such as showiness, mismanagement, nepotism, and widespread poaching. However, even in officially recognized literature, not entirely canonical "mutations"—the natural Lieutenant
A lieutenant ( , ; abbreviated Lt., Lt, LT, Lieut and similar) is a Junior officer, junior commissioned officer rank in the armed forces of many nations, as well as fire services, emergency medical services, Security agency, security services ...
, nostalgic Village
A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...
and intellectual "Urban Prose" ( Yury Trifonov), the literature of the Sixtiers and "Quiet Poetry" movements appear. Since the 1960s, Valentin Kataev
Valentin Petrovich Kataev (; also spelled Katayev or Kataiev; – 12 April 1986) was a Soviet writer and editor who managed to create penetrating works discussing post-revolutionary social conditions without running afoul of the demands of ...
has been moving away from official realism, developing his own modernist style, "Mauvism" (from the French word ''mauvais'', "bad").
The Khrushchev Thaw
The Khrushchev Thaw (, or simply ''ottepel'')William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, London: Free Press, 2004 is the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s when Political repression in the Soviet Union, repression and Censorship in ...
() brought some fresh wind to literature (the term was coined after Ilya Ehrenburg's 1954 novel '' The Thaw''). Published in 1956, Vladimir Dudintsev's novel '' Not by Bread Alone'' and Yury Dombrovsky's ''The Keeper of Antiquities'' in 1964 became two of the main literary events of the Thaw and a milestone in the process of de-Stalinization
De-Stalinization () comprised a series of political reforms in the Soviet Union after Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, the death of long-time leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, and Khrushchev Thaw, the thaw brought about by ascension of Nik ...
, but was soon criticized and withdrawn from circulation. The last years of life were fruitful for Nikolay Zabolotsky, who was repressed during the Stalin years. The publication in 1962 of the philosophical novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Soviet and Russian author and Soviet dissidents, dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag pris ...
's debut story '' One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich'' about a political prisoner became a national and international sensation. Poetry of the Sixtiers or Russian New Wave became a mass-cultural phenomenon: Bella Akhmadulina, Boris Slutsky, Victor Sosnora, Robert Rozhdestvensky, Andrei Voznesensky, and Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko (; 18 July 1933 – 1 April 2017) was a Soviet and Russian poet, novelist, essayist, dramatist, screenwriter, publisher, actor, editor, university professor, and director of several films.
Biography Early lif ...
, read their poems in stadiums and attracted huge crowds, as follows:
Such exponents of neo- Acmeist poetry as Arseny Tarkovsky, Semyon Lipkin, David Samoylov, Alexander Kushner and Oleg Chukhontsev, the representatives "quiet poetry" Anatoly Zhigulin, Stanislav Kunyaev, Nikolay Rubtsov and Yury Kuznetsov, and also Gleb Gorbovsky, bard
In Celtic cultures, a bard is an oral repository and professional story teller, verse-maker, music composer, oral historian and genealogist, employed by a patron (such as a monarch or chieftain) to commemorate one or more of the patron's a ...
Novella Matveyeva, Yunna Morits, and Gleb Semenov's lyrical poetry also stood apart from the socrealist mainstream.
The Village Prose was a movement in Soviet literature beginning during the Khrushchev Thaw, which included works that cultivated nostalgia of rural life. Valentin Ovechkin's story ''District Routine'' (1952), expose managerial inefficiency, the self-interest of party functionaries, was the starting point of the movement. Its major members Alexander Yashin, Fyodor Abramov, Boris Mozhayev, Viktor Astafyev, Vladimir Soloukhin, Vasily Shukshin, Vasily Belov, and Valentin Rasputin clustered in the traditionalist and nationalist '' Nash Sovremennik'' literary magazine.
Since 1985/86, the ''Perestroika
''Perestroika'' ( ; rus, перестройка, r=perestrojka, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg, links=no) was a political reform movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s, widely associ ...
''—a period of great changes in the political and cultural life in the USSR—gave way to a wide diversity of banned previously and new writings. In 1986 there was established the legal non-Realistic literary club "Poetry", among its members were Dmitry Prigov, Igor Irtenyev, Aleksandr Yeryomenko, Sergey Gandlevsky, and Yuri Arabov. Many previously suppressed works were published among first, in 1986–87, anti-Stalinist Alexander Bek's novel ''The New Appointment'' (1965) and Anatoly Rybakov's '' Children of the Arbat'' trilogy. The events of the theater of the absurd were postmodern plays of Nina Sadur. Among the best writers of "alternative fiction," openly discussing previously taboo themes, were Mikhail Kurayev (b. 1939), Valery Popov, Tatyana Tolstaya, and Viktor Yerofeyev.
Soviet nonconformism
Some writers dared to oppose Soviet ideology, like short-story writer Varlam Shalamov (1907–1982) and Nobel Prize-winning novelistAleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Soviet and Russian author and Soviet dissidents, dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag pris ...
(1918–2008), who wrote about life in the gulag
The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...
camps, or Vasily Grossman (1905–1964), with his description of World War II events countering the Soviet official historiography (his epic novel '' Life and Fate'' (1959) was not published in the Soviet Union until the ''perestroika
''Perestroika'' ( ; rus, перестройка, r=perestrojka, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg, links=no) was a political reform movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s, widely associ ...
''). Such writers, dubbed "dissidents
A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 2 ...
", could not publish their major works until the 1960s.''Accursed Poets: Dissident Poetry from Soviet Russia 1960–80''ed. and trans. by Anatoly Kudryavitsky, Thirsk, UK: Smokestack Books, 2020, . Modernist and
Postmodern
Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wo ...
dissident literature was related and partially coincided with the Soviet nonconformist art movement. From 1953 to 1957, the ''Mansard Group''—first unofficial poetry group—existed till its leader Leonid Chertkov (1933–2000) was imprisoned, among other members Galina Andreeva (1933–2016) and Stanislav Krasovitsky (b. 1935). Another poetry group of '50s in Leningrad was the ''Philological School'' that included Mikhail Eremin (1936–2022), Sergey Kulle (1936–1984), Leonid Vinogradov (1936–2004) and poet and artist Vladimir Uflyand (1937–2007). Some poets were both artists or participants and inspirers of art groups, such as Evgenii Kropivnitsky (1893–1979), Igor Kholin, Genrikh Sapgir
Genrikh Sapgir (; November 20, 1928, Biysk, Altai Krai, Russia – October 7, 1999, Moscow) was a Russian poet and fiction writer of Jewish descent.
Biography
He was born in Biysk to a family of a Moscow engineer on a business trip. The fam ...
, Vilen Barskyi (1930–2012), Roald Mandelstam (1932–1961), Vsevolod Nekrasov (1934–2009), Mikhail Eremin (1936–2022), Igor Sinyavin (1937–2000), Alexei Khvostenko (1940–2004), Dmitry Prigov (1940–2007), Kari Unksova (1941–1983), Ry Nikonova (1942–2014), Oleg Grigoriev (1943–1992), Valery Kholodenko (1945–1993), Serge Segay (1947–2014), and Vladimir Sorokin (b. 1955).
But the late 1950s thaw did not last long. In the 1970s, some of the most prominent authors were not only banned from publishing but were also prosecuted for their anti-Soviet sentiments, or for parasitism
Parasitism is a close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives (at least some of the time) on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The en ...
, thus writers Yuli Daniel (1925–1988) and Leonid Borodin (1938–2011) was imprisoned. Solzhenitsyn and Nobel Prize–winning poet Joseph Brodsky
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (; ; 24 May 1940 – 28 January 1996) was a Russian and American poet and essayist. Born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) in the Soviet Union, Brodsky ran afoul of Soviet authorities and was expelled ("strongly ...
(1940–1996) were expelled from the country. Others, such as writers and poets David Dar (1910–1980), Viktor Nekrasov (1911–1987), Lev Kopelev (1912–1997), Aleksandr Galich (1918–1977), Arkadiy Belinkov (1921–2019), Elizaveta Mnatsakanova (1922–2006), Alexander Zinoviev (1922–2006), Naum Korzhavin (1925–2018), Andrei Sinyavsky
Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky (; 8 October 1925 – 25 February 1997) was a Russian writer and Soviet dissident known as a defendant in the Sinyavsky–Daniel trial of 1965.
Sinyavsky was a literary critic for ''Novy Mir'' and wrote works critic ...
(1925–1997), Arkady Lvov (1927–2020), Yuz Aleshkovsky (1929–2022), Anatoly Kuznetsov (1929–1979), Vilen Barskyi, Vladimir Maksimov (1930–1995), Yuri Mamleev (1931–2015), Georgi Vladimov (1931–2003), Vasily Aksyonov (1932–2009), Vladimir Voinovich (1932–2018), Leonid Chertkov, Anatoly Gladilin (1935–2018), Anri Volokhonsky (1936–2017), Andrei Bitov (1937–2018), Igor Sinyavin, Alexei Khvostenko, Sergei Dovlatov (1941–1990), Eduard Limonov
Eduard Veniaminovich Limonov (né Savenko; , ; 22 February 1943 – 17 March 2020) was a Russians, Russian writer, poet, publicist, political dissident and politician.
He emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1974, but returned to Russia in 1991 ...
(1943–2020), and Sasha Sokolov (b. 1943), had to emigrate to the West, while Oleg Grigoriev and Venedikt Yerofeyev (1938–1990) "emigrated" to alcoholism, and repressed still in Stalinist years poet Yury Aikhenvald (1928–1993) with some others to translations, and Kari Unksova and Yury Dombrovsky (1909–1978) were murdered, Dombrovsky shortly after publishing his novel '' The Faculty of Useless Knowledge'' (1975). Their books were not published officially until the ''perestroika'' period of the 1980s, although fans continued to reprint them manually in a manner called "'' samizdat''" (self-publishing).
In 1960s arose unofficial Soviet second Russian avant-garde and Russian postmodernism. In 1965–72, at Leningrad existed the avantgardist Absurdist poetic and writing group "Khelenkuts", which included Vladimir Erl and Aleksandr Mironov, among others. Andrei Bitov was Postmodernism first proponent. In 1970, Venedikt Erofeyev's surrealist
Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...
postmodern prose poem '' Moscow-Petushki'' was published via ''samizdat''. The Soviet emigrant Sasha Sokolov wrote surrealist '' A School for Fools'' in 1973 and the completely postmodern novel ''Between Dog and Wolf'' in 1980.
Other remarkable postmodern novels were Eduard Limonov's '' It's Me, Eddie'', Vladimir Voinovich's '' The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin'', Vasily Aksyonov's ''The Island of Crimea'' and Vladimir Sorokin's ''The Norm''. Sergei Dovlatov, Valery Popov, and Yevgeni Popov predominantly wrote short stories. Since '70s there were such postmodern unofficial movements as Moscow Conceptualists with elements of concrete poetry
Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance. It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has now developed a distinct mea ...
(Vsevolod Nekrasov, Dmitry Prigov, writer and literary scholar Viktor Yerofeyev, Lev Rubinstein, Timur Kibirov, early Vladimir Sorokin) and Metarealism, namely metaphysical realism, used complex metaphors which they called meta-metaphors (Konstantin Kedrov, Viktor Krivulin, Elena Katsyuba, Ivan Zhdanov, Elena Shvarts, Vladimir Aristov, Aleksandr Yeryomenko, scholar Svetlana Kekova, Yuri Arabov, Alexei Parshchikov, Sergei Nadeem and Nikolai Kononov). Arkadii Dragomoshchenko is considered the foremost representative of the Language Poets
The Language poets (or L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E (magazine), ''L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E'' poets, after the magazine of that name) are an avant-garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The poets included: Berna ...
in Russian literature. In Yeysk, there was the "Transfurist" group of mixing verbal, sound
In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid.
In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the br ...
and visual poetry (Ry Nikonova and Serge Segay, among others). As mentioned Leonid Vinogradov, as well as members of ''List of characters'' group Mikhail Faynerman and Ivan Akhmetyev were exponents of Minimalist verse. The banned from publishing Chuvash and Russian poet Gennadiy Aygi had been creating experimental surrealist verses as follows:
Among other underground poets and writers were the exponent of stream of consciousness
In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator. It is usually in the form of an interior monologue which ...
prose Pavel Ulitin, Dmitry Avaliani, Yevgeny Kharitonov, economist and poet Yevgeny Saburov, Elena Ignatova, Mikhail Aizenberg and Yevgeny Bunimovich, as well partially banned Vladimir Dudintsev, Fazil Iskander and Olga Sedakova.
Popular Soviet genres
Children's literature in the Soviet Union counted as a major genre because of its educational role. A large share of early-Soviet children's books were poems: Korney Chukovsky (1882–1969), Samuil Marshak (1887–1964) and Agnia Barto (1906–1981) were among the most read poets. "Adult" poets, such as Mayakovsky and Sergey Mikhalkov (1913–2009), contributed to the genre as well. Some of the early Soviet children's prose consisted of loose adaptations of foreign fairy-tales unknown in contemporary Russia. Alexey N. Tolstoy (1882–1945) wrote '' Buratino'', a light-hearted and shortened adaptation ofCarlo Collodi
Carlo Lorenzini (; 24 November 1826 – 26 October 1890), better known by the pen name Carlo Collodi ( ; ), was an Italian author, humourist, and journalist, widely known for his fairy tale novel '' The Adventures of Pinocchio''.
Early lif ...
's ''Pinocchio
Pinocchio ( , ) is a fictional character and the protagonist of the children's novel, ''The Adventures of Pinocchio'' (1883) by Italian writer Carlo Collodi of Florence, Tuscany. Pinocchio was carved by a poor man named Geppetto in a Tuscan vil ...
''. Alexander Volkov (1891–1977) introduced fantasy fiction
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction that involves supernatural or Magic (supernatural), magical elements, often including Fictional universe, imaginary places and Legendary creature, creatures.
The genre's roots lie in oral traditions, ...
to Soviet children with his loose translation of L. Frank Baum's '' The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'', published as '' The Wizard of the Emerald City'' in 1939, and then wrote a series of five sequels, unrelated to Baum. Other notable authors include Nikolay Nosov (1908–1976), Lazar Lagin (1903–1979), Vitaly Bianki (1894–1959) and Vladimir Suteev (1903–1993).
While fairy tales were relatively free from ideological oppression, the realistic children's prose of the Stalinist era was highly ideological and pursued the goal to raise children as patriots and communists. A notable writer in this vein was Arkady Gaydar (1904–1941), himself a Red Army commander (colonel) in Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. I ...
: his stories and plays about Timur
Timur, also known as Tamerlane (1320s17/18 February 1405), was a Turco-Mongol conqueror who founded the Timurid Empire in and around modern-day Afghanistan, Iran, and Central Asia, becoming the first ruler of the Timurid dynasty. An undefeat ...
describe a team of young pioneer volunteers who help the elderly and resist hooligans. There was a genre of hero-pioneer story that bore some similarities with Christian genre of hagiography
A hagiography (; ) is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a preacher, priest, founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions. Early Christian ...
. In the times of Khrushchov ( First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964) and of Brezhnev (in power 1966–1982), however, the pressure lightened. Mid- and late-Soviet children's books by Eduard Uspensky, Yuri Entin, Viktor Dragunsky bear no signs of propaganda. In the 1970s many of these books, as well as stories by foreign children's writers, were adapted into animation.
The famous and widely popular satirists were Mikhail Zoshchenko, Valentin Kataev
Valentin Petrovich Kataev (; also spelled Katayev or Kataiev; – 12 April 1986) was a Soviet writer and editor who managed to create penetrating works discussing post-revolutionary social conditions without running afoul of the demands of ...
and the writing tandem Ilf and Petrov, described problems of post-Revolutionary Soviet society.
Soviet Science fiction
Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...
, inspired by scientistic revolution, industrialisation, and the country's space pioneering, was flourishing, albeit in the limits allowed by censors. Early science fiction authors, such as Alexander Belyaev, Grigory Adamov, Vladimir Obruchev, Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy, stuck to hard science fiction
Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell's ''Islands of Space'' in the Novemb ...
and regarded H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer, prolific in many genres. He wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, hist ...
and Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne (;''Longman Pronunciation Dictionary''. ; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet and playwright.
His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the ''Voyages extraor ...
as examples to follow. Two notable exceptions to this trend were early Soviet dissidents Yevgeny Zamyatin, author of dystopian novel
Utopian and dystopian fiction are subgenres of speculative fiction that explore extreme forms of social and political structures. Utopian fiction portrays a setting that agrees with the author's ethos, having various attributes of another reality ...
'' We'', and Mikhail Bulgakov
Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov ( ; rus, links=no, Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков, p=mʲɪxɐˈil ɐfɐˈnasʲjɪvʲɪdʑ bʊlˈɡakəf; – 10 March 1940) was a Russian and Soviet novelist and playwright. His novel ''The M ...
, who used science fiction in '' Heart of a Dog'', '' The Fatal Eggs'' and '' Ivan Vasilyevich'' to satirize Communist ideology vs. what it is actual practice. Like the dissident writers of the future, Zamyatin and Bulgakov had serious problems with publishing their books due to censorship in the Soviet Union
Censorship in the Soviet Union was pervasive and strictly enforced.
Censorship was performed in two main directions:
* State secrets were handled by the General Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press (also known as Glav ...
.
Since the Khrushchev thaw
The Khrushchev Thaw (, or simply ''ottepel'')William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, London: Free Press, 2004 is the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s when Political repression in the Soviet Union, repression and Censorship in ...
in the 1950s, Soviet science fiction began to form its own style. Philosophy, ethics
Ethics is the philosophy, philosophical study of Morality, moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates Normativity, normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches inclu ...
, utopia
A utopia ( ) typically describes an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or near-perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia (book), Utopia'', which describes a fictiona ...
n and dystopia
A dystopia (lit. "bad place") is an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives. It is an imagined place (possibly state) in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmen ...
n ideas became its core, and Social science fiction was the most popular subgenre. Although the view of Earth's future as that of utopian communist society was the only view that was welcome, the liberties of genre still offered a loophole for free expression. Books of brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
The brothers Arkady Strugatsky (28 August 1925 – 12 October 1991) and Boris Strugatsky (14 April 1933 – 19 November 2012) were Soviet and Russian science-fiction authors who collaborated through most of their careers. Their notable works in ...
, and Kir Bulychev, among others, are reminiscent of social problems and often include satire of contemporary Soviet society. Ivan Yefremov, on the contrary, arose to fame with his utopia
A utopia ( ) typically describes an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or near-perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia (book), Utopia'', which describes a fictiona ...
n views on future as well as on Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically r ...
in his historical novels
Historical fiction is a literary genre in which a fictional plot takes place in the Setting (narrative), setting of particular real past events, historical events. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literatur ...
. The Strugatskies are also credited for the Soviet's first science fantasy
file:Warhammer40kcosplay.jpg, Cosplay of a character from the ''Warhammer 40,000'' tabletop game; one critic has characterized the game's setting as "action-oriented science-fantasy."
Science fantasy is a hybrid genre within speculative fiction ...
, the Monday Begins on Saturday trilogy. Other notable science fiction writers included Vladimir Savchenko, Georgy Gurevich, Alexander Kazantsev, Georgy Martynov, Yeremey Parnov.
Space opera
Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes Space warfare in science fiction, space warfare, with use of melodramatic, risk-taking space adventures, relationships, and chivalric romance. Set mainly or entirely in outer space, i ...
was less developed, since both state censors and serious writers watched it unfavorably. Nevertheless, there were moderately successful attempts to adapt space westerns to Soviet soil. The first was Alexander Kolpakov with "Griada", after came Sergey Snegov with "Men Like Gods", among others.
A specific branch of both science fiction and children's books appeared in mid-Soviet era: the children's science fiction. It was meant to educate children while entertaining them. The star of the genre was Bulychov, who, along with his adult books, created children's space adventure series about Alisa Selezneva, a teenage girl from the future. Others include Nikolay Nosov with his books about dwarf Neznayka, Evgeny Veltistov, who wrote about robot boy Electronic, Vitaly Melentyev, Vladislav Krapivin, Vitaly Gubarev.
Mystery was another popular genre. Detectives by Vayner Brothers and spy novels by Yulian Semyonov were best-selling,Sofya Khagi: Boris Akunin and Retro Mode in Contemporary Russian CultureToronto Slavic Quarterly. and many of them were adapted into film or TV in the 1970s and 1980s. Village Prose is a genre that conveys nostalgic descriptions of rural life. Valentin Rasputin's 1976 novel, ''Proshchaniye s Matyoroy'' (''Farewell to Matyora'') depicted a village faced with destruction to make room for a hydroelectric plant.
Historical fiction
Historical fiction is a literary genre in which a fictional plot takes place in the Setting (narrative), setting of particular real past events, historical events. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literatur ...
in the early Soviet era included a large share of memoirs
A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative writing based on the author's personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autobio ...
, fictionalized or not. Valentin Katayev and Lev Kassil wrote semi-autobiographic books about children's life in Tsarist Russia. Vladimir Gilyarovsky wrote ''Moscow and Muscovites'', about life in pre-revolutionary Moscow. There were also attempts to write an epic novel about the Revolution, similar to Leo Tolstoy's ''War and Peace'', based on the writers' own experience. Aleksey Tolstoy's '' The Road to Calvary'' (1920–1941) and Mikhail Sholokhov
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov ( rus, Михаил Александрович Шолохов, p=ˈʂoləxəf; – 21 February 1984) was a Russian novelist and winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is known for writing about life ...
's '' And Quiet Flows the Don'' (1928–1940) depict Russia from the start of the Revolution to the end of the Civil War. ''The Road to Calvary'' demonstrates the victory of socialist ideas, while ''And Quiet Flows the Don'' gives a realist and a brutal image. Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (; ), was a Russian and Soviet writer and proponent of socialism. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Before his success as an aut ...
's and Andrei Bely
Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev (, ; – 8 January 1934), better known by the pen name Andrei Bely or Biely, was a Russian novelist, Symbolist poet, theorist and literary critic. He was a committed anthroposophist and follower of Rudolf Steiner. Hi ...
's experimental novels ''The Life of Klim Samgin
''The Life of Klim Samgin'' () is a four-volume novel written by Maxim Gorky from 1925 up to his death in 1936. It is Gorky's most ambitious work, intended to depict "all the classes, all the trends, all the tendencies, all the hell-like commotio ...
'' (1925–1936) and ''Moscow'' (1926–1931) trace the relationship of Russian ''intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the i ...
'' with the revolutionary movement. Mikhail Bulgakov conceived to write a trilogy about the Civil War, but wrote only the first part, '' The White Guard'' (1923). Yury Tynyanov focused on fictional biographies of the Golden Age writers: ''The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar'' (1928) and ''Pushkin'' (1935–1943). The late Soviet historical fiction was dominated by World War II novels and short stories by authors such as the representatives of Lieutenant prose (such as Vasil Bykov), Vasily Grossman, Konstantin Simonov, Boris Vasilyev, Viktor Astafyev, among others, based on the authors' own war experience. Vasily Yan and Konstantin Badygin are best known for their novels on Medieval Rus, and Yury Tynyanov for writing on Russian Empire. Valentin Pikul
Valentin Savvich Pikul (; July 13, 1928 – July 16, 1990) was a popular and prolific Soviet Union, Soviet historical novelist of Ukrainian-Russian heritage. He lived and worked in Riga.
Pikul's novels were grounded in extensive research, blendin ...
wrote about many different epochs and countries in an Alexander Dumas-inspired style. In the 1970s there appeared a relatively independent Village Prose, whose most prominent representatives were Viktor Astafyev and Valentin Rasputin.
Any sort of fiction that dealt with the occult, either horror, adult-oriented fantasy or magic realism, was unwelcome in Soviet Russia. Until the 1980s very few books in these genres were written, and even fewer were published, although earlier books, such as by Gogol, were not banned. Of the rare exceptions, Bulgakov in '' Master and Margarita'' (not published in author's lifetime) and Strugatskies in '' Monday Begins on Saturday'' introduced magic and mystical creatures into contemporary Soviet reality to satirize it. Another exception was early Soviet writer Alexander Grin
Aleksandr Stepanovich Grinevsky (better known by his pen name, Aleksander Green / Grin (spelling varies in non-Russian literature), rus, Александр Грин, p=ɐlʲɪˈksandr ɡrʲin, a=Ru-Aleksandr Grin.ogg, 23 August 1880 – 8 July 1 ...
, who wrote neo-Romantic
The term neo-romanticism is used to cover a variety of movements in philosophy, literature, music, painting, and architecture, as well as social movements, that exist after and incorporate elements from the era of Romanticism.
It has been used ...
tales, both realistic and fantastic.
Bronze Age
Post-Soviet 1990s
The end of the 20th century proved a difficult period for Russian literature, with relatively few distinct voices. Although the limited censorship of the period of ''glasnost
''Glasnost'' ( ; , ) is a concept relating to openness and transparency. It has several general and specific meanings, including a policy of maximum openness in the activities of state institutions and freedom of information and the inadmissi ...
'' was lifted, ''de facto'' since 1989 in the Soviet Union, ''de jure'' in 1990, and writers could now freely express their thoughts, the political and economic chaos of the 1990s affected the book market and literature heavily. The book printing industry descended into crisis, the number of printed book copies dropped several times in comparison to Soviet era, and it took about a decade to revive. Some major thick literary magazines went bankrupt. And "writers' traditional special place in society no longer is recognised by most Russians..."
Among the most discussed figures of this period were authors Victor Pelevin
Victor Olegovich Pelevin ( rus, Виктор Олегович Пелевин, p=ˈvʲiktər ɐˈlʲeɡəvʲɪtɕ pʲɪˈlʲevʲɪn; born 22 November 1962) is a Russian fiction writer. His novels include ''Omon Ra'' (1992), ''The Life of Insects' ...
(b. 1962), disputably related to postmodernism
Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, Culture, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting ...
and the New Sincerity movement, who is author of the Zen
Zen (; from Chinese: ''Chán''; in Korean: ''Sŏn'', and Vietnamese: ''Thiền'') is a Mahayana Buddhist tradition that developed in China during the Tang dynasty by blending Indian Mahayana Buddhism, particularly Yogacara and Madhyamaka phil ...
-inspired '' Chapayev and the Void'', "the first novel which takes place in an absolute vacuum," postmodernist novelist and playwright Vladimir Sorokin (b. 1955, the novels ''Their Four Hearts'' and '' Blue Lard''), who started an underground writing career still in the early 80s, and the conceptualist poet Dmitry Prigov (1940–2007). Among other significant Postmodern works are Lyudmila Petrushevskaya's novella '' The Time: Night'', Anatoly Korolyov's novel ''Eron'', Yevgeni Popov's novel ''The Real Story of the "Green musicians"'', Tatyana Tolstaya's novel ''The Stynx'', Vladimir Sharov's historiosophical prose as well the Israeli literary scholar and later novelist Alexander Goldstein's variable essays.
The tradition of the classic Russian realistic novel with modernist
Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
, magic realism and new "postrealism" elements continues with such authors as: (1) the living Soviet classics Leonid Leonov, Viktor Astafyev, Yury Davydov (novel ''The Bestseller''), Valentin Rasputin, Viktoriya Tokareva
Viktoriya Samuilovna Tokareva () (born 20 November 1937) is a Soviet and Russian screenwriter and short story writer. Her work has been translated into English and is available in several anthologies as well as in ''The Talisman and Other Stories ...
and Vladimir Makanin; (2) the Soviet nonconformists Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Soviet and Russian author and Soviet dissidents, dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag pris ...
, Georgi Vladimov (a novel ''The General and His Army'') and Vasily Aksyonov (the trilogy '' Generations of Winter''); (3) "new wave" of playwright and theatre director Nikolay Kolyada (b. 1957), Aleksey Varlamov (b. 1963), Pavel Krusanov (b. 1961) and Mikhail Shishkin (b. 1961). Short stories of Sergei Dovlatov who emigrated to the US in 1979 and died in 1990 became very popular in Russia posthumously.
A relatively new trend in Russian literature is that female short story writers mentioned Viktoriya Tokareva and Lyudmila Petrushevskaya or Tatyana Tolstaya, and novelists Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Nina Sadur, Irina Polyanskaya (1952–2004), Dina Rubina or Valeriya Narbikova (b. 1958) have come into prominence.
Detective stories and thrillers have proven a very successful genre of new Russian literature: in the 1990s serial detective novels by Alexandra Marinina, Polina Dashkova and Darya Dontsova were published in millions of copies. In the next decade Boris Akunin who wrote more sophisticated popular fiction, e.g., a series of novels about the 19th century sleuth Erast Fandorin, was eagerly read across the country.
Science fiction was always well selling, albeit second to fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction that involves supernatural or Magic (supernatural), magical elements, often including Fictional universe, imaginary places and Legendary creature, creatures.
The genre's roots lie in oral traditions, ...
, that was relatively new to Russian readers. These genres boomed in the late 1990s, with authors like Sergey Lukyanenko
Sergei Vasilyevich Lukyanenko (, ; born 11 April 1968) is a Russian science fiction and fantasy author, writing in Russian language, Russian. His works often feature intense Action fiction, action-packed plots, interwoven with the Ethical dilemma ...
, Nick Perumov, Maria Semenova, Vera Kamsha, Alexey Pekhov, Anton Vilgotsky and Vadim Panov. A good share of modern Russian science fiction and fantasy is written in Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...
, especially in Kharkiv
Kharkiv, also known as Kharkov, is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city in Ukraine.
, home to H. L. Oldie, Alexander Zorich, Yuri Nikitin and Andrey Valentinov. Many others hail from Kyiv, including Marina and Sergey Dyachenko and Vladimir Arenev. Significant contribution to Russian horror literature has been done by Ukrainians Andrey Dashkov and Alexander Vargo.
Russian poetry of that period produced a number of avant-garde greats. The Moscow Conceptualists and followers of Concrete poetry
Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance. It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has now developed a distinct mea ...
, such as mentioned Dmitry Prigov, Lev Rubinstein, Anna Alchuk and Timur Kibirov (also novelist and literary scholar Viktor Yerofeyev), and the members of the Lianosovo group of nonconformist poets, notably Genrikh Sapgir
Genrikh Sapgir (; November 20, 1928, Biysk, Altai Krai, Russia – October 7, 1999, Moscow) was a Russian poet and fiction writer of Jewish descent.
Biography
He was born in Biysk to a family of a Moscow engineer on a business trip. The fam ...
, Igor Kholin and Vsevolod Nekrasov, who previously chose to refrain from publication in Soviet periodicals, became very influential, especially in Moscow,"Introduction." In ''A Night in the Nabokov Hotel: 20 Contemporary Poets from Russia'', introd. and trans. by Anatoly Kudryavitsky, Dublin: Dedalus Press, 2006, . and the same goes for another masterful experimental neo-surrealist
Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...
Chuvash and Russian poet, Gennadiy Aygi. Also popular were poets following some other poetic trends, e.g., members of "neo-Baroque" poetry school (not to be confused with neo-Baroque architecture) Ivan Zhdanov, Elena Shvarts, Aleksandr Yeryomenko and Alexei Parshchikov, Konstantin Kedrov and Elena Katsuba from ''DOOS'', scholar Svetlana Kekova, Sergei Nadeem and Nikolai Kononov from Saratov
Saratov ( , ; , ) is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and administrative center of Saratov Oblast, Russia, and a major port on the Volga River. Saratov had a population of 901,361, making it the List of cities and tow ...
club ''Cocoon'', Vladimir Aristov, Yuri Arabov and other representatives of the 1970–80s Metarealism, who all used complex metaphors which they called meta-metaphors; in St. Petersburg, members of ''New Leningrad Poetry School'' that included not only the famous Joseph Brodsky
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (; ; 24 May 1940 – 28 January 1996) was a Russian and American poet and essayist. Born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) in the Soviet Union, Brodsky ran afoul of Soviet authorities and was expelled ("strongly ...
but also Viktor Krivulin, Sergey Stratanovsky and Elena Shvarts, and such members of ''Philological School'' as Mikhail Eremin, Leonid Vinogradov, Vladimir Uflyand and the Russian-American scholar Lev Loseff, were prominent first in the Soviet-times underground—and later in mainstream poetry; minimalist verse was represented since 1970s by members of ''List of characters'' group Mikhail Faynerman, Ivan Akhmetyev and later by Alexander Makarov-Krotkov; in 1992 emerged, the Meloimaginist group related to previous Imaginism and included such poets and novelists as Russian-Irish bilingual Anatoly Kudryavitsky and Ludmila Vaturina; among other names, poets with nonconformist background Russian-Austrian musicolog Elizaveta Mnatsakanova, Galina Andreeva, Leonid Chertkov, Stanislav Krasovitsky, Dmitry Avaliani, Ry Nikonova, economist Yevgeny Saburov, Russian-Israeli author Elena Ignatova, Mikhail Aizenberg, Yevgeny Bunimovich and Dimitry Grigoriev, also poet and writer Nikolaĭ Baĭtov, the Russian-German scholar Sergey Biryukov with futurist and surrealist background, Irina Iermakova, Vitaly Kalpidi, the unable to publish during Soviet years scholar Olga Sedakova, and Borys Khersonskyi. Notable poets of younger generation are Elena Fanailova (b. 1962), German Lukomnikov (b. 1962), Vera Pavlova (b. 1963), Grigory Dashevsky (1964–2013), Sergei Kruglov (b. 1966), Dmitry Kuzmin (b. 1968), Arseniy Rovinsky (b. 1968), Asya Shneiderman (b. 1968), Maxim Amelin (b. 1970), Mikhail Gronas (b. 1970), Fyodor Svarovsky (b. 1971), Stanislav Lvovsky (b. 1972), Maria Stepanova (b. 1972), Alina Vitukhnovskaya (b. 1973), Inga Kuznetsova (b. 1974), Boris Ryzhy (1974–2001), Shish Bryansky (b. 1975), Linor Goralik (b. 1975), Kirill Medvedev (b. 1975), and Polina Barskova (b. 1976).
21st century
At the beginning of the 21st century,Victor Pelevin
Victor Olegovich Pelevin ( rus, Виктор Олегович Пелевин, p=ˈvʲiktər ɐˈlʲeɡəvʲɪtɕ pʲɪˈlʲevʲɪn; born 22 November 1962) is a Russian fiction writer. His novels include ''Omon Ra'' (1992), ''The Life of Insects' ...
and Vladimir Sorokin remained the leading and prolific Russian writers. Pelevin became the most extensively translated one into English. Also significant are the new works of Boris Akunin (adventure fiction
Adventure fiction is a type of fiction that usually presents danger, or gives the reader a sense of excitement. Some adventure fiction also satisfies the literary definition of Romance (prose fiction)#Definition, romance fiction.
History
In t ...
), Lyudmila Ulitskaya (the ''Daniel Stein, Interpreter'', a novel about the Holocaust
The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
and interreligious relations), and Mikhali Shishkin (the novel ''Maidenhair'').
Among the debutants in prose are Eduard Kochergin (b. 1937) with his novels ''Angel's Doll'' and ''Baptized with Crosses'', Alexei Ivanov (b. 1969) known for his novel ''The Heart of Parma'', a Russian-Israeli writer and poet in the philosophical-symbolic vein Alexander Ilichevsky (b. 1970), who wrote ''The Persian'' and the ''Newton's Drawing'', the author of novel ''The Librarian'' Mikhail Elizarov (b. 1973), and German Sadulaev (b. 1973) with the book ''I am a Chechen!'' In the second decade of the century, the following novelists gained fame: Eugene Vodolazkin (b. 1964) for '' The Laurus'' (one of ten best world novels about God by ''The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' version), Sofia Sinitskaya (b. 1972), the author of the neutral novel ''Black Siberia'' on Russo-Ukrainian War
The Russo-Ukrainian War began in February 2014 and is ongoing. Following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia Russian occupation of Crimea, occupied and Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, annexed Crimea from Ukraine. It then ...
, and Alexei Salnikov (b. 1978) for his hallucinatory ''The Petrovs in and Around the Flu'' (regarded as a rare outstanding text, see also the film '' Petrov's Flu''). In the form of popular fiction, post-apocalyptic novels of Dmitry Glukhovsky (b. 1979) are successful.
Almost all of the authors named criticized Putinism and have left Russia. After 2022, they have been " canceled" and their books have been withdrawn from a number of Russian booksellers. Examples of active supporters of the political regime among eminent writers are poet Yunna Morits (b. 1937) and nationalists Alexander Prokhanov (b. 1938), Yurii Poliakov (b. 1954) Pavel Krusanov (b. 1961) and Zakhar Prilepin (b. 1975).
A new generation of Russian authors appeared, differing greatly from the postmodernist Russian prose of the late 20th century, which led critics to speak about "new realism" as one of several contemporary literary trends ( Pavel Basinsky (b. 1961), Aleksey Varlamov (b. 1963), Alexei Ivanov, Andrei Rubanov (b. 1969), Oleg Pavlov (1970–2018), Andrei Ivanov (b. 1971), Roman Senchin (b. 1971), German Sadulaev, Zakhar Prilepin, and others).
The treasury of Russian poetry has been replenished with works by both senior masters, like Oleg Chukhontsev (b. 1938), and such debutants as Natalia Azarova (b. 1956), Vsevolod Emelin (b. 1959), Tatiana Grauz (b. 1964), Andrei Polyakov (b. 1968), Andrei Sen-Senkov (b. 1968), Tania Skarynkina (b. 1969), Igor Bulatovsky (b. 1971), Vlad Malenko (b. 1971), Andrei Rodionov (b. 1971), Anna Glazova (b. 1973), Victor Ivaniv (1977–2015), Eugenia Rits (b. 1977), Ekaterina Simonova (b. 1977), Pavel Goldin (b. 1978), Nika Skandiaka (b. 1978), Anna Zolotaryova (b. 1978), Roman Osminkin (b. 1979), Sergey Tenyatnikov (b. 1981), Vasily Borodin (1982–2021), Tatiana Moseeva (b. 1983), Alla Gorbunova (b. 1985), Vera Polozkova (b. 1986), Yevgenia Suslova (b. 1986), Nikita Ivanov (b. 1989), Galina Rymbu (b. 1990), Daria Serenko (b. 1993), and Maria Malinovskaya (b. 1994). The main trends of contemporary poetry are neo-surrealist fragmentation, as well as the return of plot poetry among representatives of the “New Epic” movement.
Two new literary prizes were established and became influential: the Big Book and the National Bestseller.
List of movements
The following is a list of international and regiinalliterary movements
Literary movements are a way to divide literature into categories of similar philosophical, topical, or aesthetic features, as opposed to divisions by literary genre, genre or period. Like other categorizations, literary movements provide languag ...
, those represented in Russian literature. Their notable members ordering is predominantly by precedence.
Russian Nobel laureates in literature
See also
References
Bibliography
Works cited
* * * * * * , viArchive.org
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Further reading
* * * * Brunson, M. (2016).Russian Realisms: Literature and Painting, 1840–1890
'. NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. DeKalb, Il: Northern Illinois University Press. * * * * * Grigoryan, B. (2018).
Noble Subjects: The Russian Novel and the Gentry, 1762–1861
'. NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. DeKalb, Il: Northern Illinois University Press. * Reprint Routledge, 2021. * Reprint: Routledge, 2021. * * * * * * Via
Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical charac ...
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Anthologies
''Accursed Poets: Dissident Poetry from Soviet Russia 1960–80''
Ed. and trans. by Anatoly Kudryavitsky. Thirsk, UK: Smokestack Books, 2020. . * ''An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature: Two Centuries of Dual Identity in Prose and Poetry, 1801–2001'' 2 vols. Ed., selec., and cotrans. with introd. essays by Maxim D. Shrayer. Armonk, NY; London: M.E. Sharpe, 2007. .
''Anthology of Russian Short Stories from Classical to Modern''
Comp. by Galina Bazhanova. Trans. from the Russian. 2 vols. Moscow: Raduga Pub.; London & Wellingborough: Collets, 1985. .
Vol. 1
Vol. 2
* ''An Anthology of Russian Women's Writing, 1777–1992''. Ed. by Catriona Kelly. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. .
''A Bilingual Collection of Russian Short Stories''
Ed. with introd. by Maurice Friedberg. 2 vols. New York: Random House, 1964–65.
''The Blue Lagoon Anthology of Modern Russian Poetry''
Ed. by Konstantin K. Kuzminsky and Gregory L. Kovalev; Institute of Modern Russian Culture at Blue Lagoon, Texas. vols., 9 books.Newtonville, Ma: Oriental Research Partners, 1980–1986.
A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections by Isabel Florence Hapgood
* ''The Literature of Eighteenth-Century Russia: An Anthology of Russian Literary Materials of the Age of Classicism and the Enlightenment from the Reign of Peter the Great, 1689–1725, to the Reign of Alexander I, 1801–1825''. 2 vols. Ed. and trans. by Harold B. Segel. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1967. * ''Mass Culture in Soviet Russia: Tales, Poems, Songs, Movies, Plays, and Folklore, 1917–1953'' Ed. by James von Geldern and Richard Stites. Bloomington, In.: Indiana University Press, 1995. .
''Masterpieces of the Russian drama''
Selec. and ed. with introd. by George Rapall Noyes. 2 vols. New York: Dover Pub., 1960–1961 933br>Vol. 1
Vol. 2
''Medieval Russia's Epics, Chronicles, and Tales''
Ed., trans. with introd. by Serge A. Zenkovsky. Rev. ed. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1974 963 * ''A Night in the Nabokov Hotel: 20 Contemporary Poets from Russia''. Introd. and trans. by Anatoly Kudryavitsky. Dublin: Dedalus Press, 2006. . * ''The Penguin Book of Russian Verse''. Introd. and ed. by Dimitri Obolensky. Rev. ed. London: Penguin Books, 1965 962 * ''Post-war Russian Poetry''. Ed. with introd. by Daniel Weissbort. London: Penguin Books, 1974. .
''Russian Poetry under the Tsars: An Anthology''
Comp. and trans. by Burton Raffel. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1971. .
''Russian Silver Age Poetry: Texts And Contexts''
Ed. by Sibelan E. S. Forrester and Martha M. F. Kelly. Boston, Mi: Academic Studies Press, 2015. . * ''The Silver Age of Russian Culture: An Anthology''. Ed. by Carl and Ellendea Proffer. Ann Arbor, Mi: Ardis, 1975. . * Third Wave: The New Russian Poetry Ed. by Kent Johnson and Stephen M. Ashby. Introd. by Andrew Wachtel and Alexei Parshchikov. Afterword by Mikhail Epstein. Ann Arbor, Mi: University of Michigan Press, 1992. . * ''Two Centuries of Russian Verse: An Anthology from Lomonosov to Voznesensky''. Ed. with introd. by Avrahm Yarmolinsky. Trans. from Russian by Babette Deutsch. New York: Random House, 1966. * ''Unknown Russian Theater: An Anthology''. Ed. and trans. by Michael Green and Jerome Katsell. Vol. 1. Ann Arbor, Mi: Ardis, 1991. . * ''Utopias: Russian Modernist Texts, 1905—1940''. Ed. and trans. by Catriona Kelly. London: Penguin Books, 1999. * ''War & Peace: Contemporary Russian Prose''. Glas New Russian Writing, 40. Moscow: Glas, 2006. Ed. by Natasha Perova and Joanne Turnbull. Trans. by Joanne Turnbull. . * ''Worlds Apart: An Anthology of Russian Fantasy and Science Fiction'' Ed. and comm. by Alexander Levitsky. Trans. by Alexander Levitsky and Martha T. Kitchen. New York: Duckworth Overlook, 2007. . * ''Во Весь Голос n a Loud Voice Soviet Poetry'' n Russian with English Notes & Voc Ed. by Vladimir Ognev. Moscow: Progress Pub., 1965.
External links
* *Fundamental Digital Library of Russian Literature and Folklore
(in English and Russian) * — site on Translations and Publications of Russian literature
Russian Poetry in Translations
at Reverses.com
Soviet Literature Resource
at SovLit.net (in English)
National Audio Fund
— a huge collection of radio plays and literary readings of past years at Old Radio (in Russian)
by the Slavic Reference Service
Search Russian Books
at Bookle.ru (in Russian)
* * ttps://www.rvb.ru Russian Virtual Library(in Russian)
Maxim Moshkov's E-library of Russian literature
(in Russian) {{DEFAULTSORT:Russian Literature