Village Prose (russian: Деревенская проза, or Деревенская литература) was a movement in

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

literature beginning during the

Khrushchev Thaw The Khrushchev Thaw ( rus, хрущёвская о́ттепель, r=khrushchovskaya ottepel, p=xrʊˈɕːɵfskəjə ˈotʲ:ɪpʲɪlʲ or simply ''ottepel'')William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, London: Free Press, 2004 is the period ...

, which included works that focused on the Soviet rural communities. Some point to the critical essays on

collectivization Collective farming and communal farming are various types of, "agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise". There are two broad types of communal farms: agricultural cooperatives, in which member- ...

Novyi mir ''Novy Mir'' (russian: links=no, Новый мир, , ''New World'') 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 ...

Valentin Ovechkin Valentin Vladimirovich Ovechkin (russian: Валентин Владимирович Овечкин; June 22, 1906 – January 27, 1968) was a Soviet writer, playwright, and journalist. Early life Valentin was born in Taganrog, the son of an offic ...

as the starting point of Village Prose, though most of the subsequent works associated with the genre are fictional novels and short stories. Authors associated with Village Prose include

Aleksander Yashin Alexander Yakovlevich Yashin (russian: Алекса́ндр Я́ковлевич Я́шин; March 27, 1913 – July 11, 1968) was a Soviet writer associated with the Village Prose movement. Biography Early life Yashin was born in the norther ...

, Vasily Belov,

Fyodor Abramov Fyodor Aleksandrovich Abramov (russian: Фёдор Алекса́ндрович Абра́мов) (29 February 192014 May 1983) was a Russian novelist and literary critic. His work focused on the difficult lives of the Russian peasant class. H ...

Valentin Rasputin Valentin Grigoriyevich Rasputin (; russian: Валентин Григорьевич Распутин; 15 March 193714 March 2015) was a Russian writer. He was born and lived much of his life in the Irkutsk Oblast in Eastern Siberia. Rasputin's w ...

Boris Mozhayev Boris Andreyevich Mozhayev (Борис Андреевич Можаев; June 1, 1923, in Pitelino village, Ryazan Governorate - March 2, 1996, in Moscow) was a Soviet Russian author, dramatist, script-writer and editor, the USSR State Prize (19 ...

Vasily Shukshin Vasily Makarovich Shukshin (russian: Василий Макарович Шукшин; 25 July 1929 – 2 October 1974) was a Soviet Russian writer, actor, screenwriter and film director from the Altai region who specialized in rural themes. A ...

. Some critics also count

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repress ...

among the Village Prose writers for his short novel '' Matryona's Place''. Many Village Prose works espoused an idealized picture of traditional Russian village life and became increasingly associated with

Russian nationalism Russian nationalism is a form of nationalism that promotes Russian cultural identity and unity. Russian nationalism first rose to prominence in the early 19th century, and from its origin in the Russian Empire, to its repression during early B ...

in the 1970s and 1980s. Some have argued that the

nationalist Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a in-group and out-group, group of peo ...

subtext of Village Prose is the reason the Soviet government remained supportive of Village Prose writers like Valentin Rasputin (who became a member of the Writers' Union) during the

Time of Stagnation The "Era of Stagnation" (russian: Пери́од засто́я, Períod zastóya, or ) is a term coined by Mikhail Gorbachev in order to describe the negative way in which he viewed the economic, political, and social policies of the Soviet Uni ...

, even while they began to more heavily censor other dissenting movements, like Youth and Urban Prose.Simon Cosgrove, Russian Nationalism and the Politics of Soviet Literature: The Case of Nash sovremennik, 1981-1991, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, NY: 2004

References

External links

SovLit - Free summaries of Soviet era books, many from the Thaw Era
Soviet literature 20th-century Russian literature {{lit-mov-stub

See also

References

External links