Russian literature

Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia and its émigrés and to Russian-language literature. The roots of Russian literature can be traced to the Middle Ages, when epics and chronicles in Old East Slavic were composed. By the Age of Enlightenment, literature had grown in importance, and from the early 1830s, Russian literature underwent an astounding golden age in poetry, prose and drama. Romanticism permitted a flowering of poetic talent: Vasily Zhukovsky and later his protégé Alexander Pushkin came to the fore. Prose was flourishing as well. The first great Russian novelist was Nikolai Gogol. Then came Ivan Turgenev, who mastered both short stories and novels. Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy soon became internationally renowned. In the second half of the century Anton Chekhov excelled in short stories and became a leading dramatist. The beginning of the 20th century ranks as the Silver Age of Russian poetry. The poets most often associated with the "Silver Age" are Konstantin Balmont, Valery Bryusov, Alexander Blok, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolay Gumilyov, Osip Mandelstam, Sergei Yesenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Marina Tsvetaeva and Boris Pasternak. This era produced some first-rate novelists and short-story writers, such as Aleksandr Kuprin, Nobel Prize winner Ivan Bunin, Leonid Andreyev, Fyodor Sologub, Aleksey Remizov, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Andrei Bely.

Chekhov and Tolstoy, 1901

After the Revolution of 1917, Russian literature split into Soviet and white émigré parts. While the Soviet Union assured universal literacy and a highly developed book printing industry, it also enforced ideological censorship. In the 1930s Socialist realism became the predominant trend in Russia. Its leading figure was Maxim Gorky, who laid the foundations of this style. Nikolay Ostrovsky's novel How the Steel Was Tempered has been among the most successful works of Russian literature. Alexander Fadeyev achieved success in Russia. Various émigré writers, such as poets Vladislav Khodasevich, Georgy Ivanov and Vyacheslav Ivanov; novelists such as Mark Aldanov, Gaito Gazdanov and Vladimir Nabokov; and short story Nobel Prize-winning writer Ivan Bunin, continued to write in exile. Some writers dared to oppose Soviet ideology, like Nobel Prize-winning novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who wrote about life in the gulag camps. The Khrushchev Thaw 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 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 Victor Pelevin, who gained popularity with short stories and novels, novelist and playwright 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 lead critics to speak about "new realism".

Russian authors have significantly contributed to numerous literary genres. Russia has five Nobel Prize in literature laureates. As of 2011, Russia was the fourth largest book producer in the world in terms of published titles.[1] A popular folk saying claims Russians are "the world's most reading nation".[2][3]

Early historyEdit

Old Russian literature consists of several masterpieces written in the Old East Slavic (i.e. the language of Kievan Rus', not to be confused with the contemporaneous Church Slavonic nor with modern Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian). The main type of Old Russian historical literature were chronicles, most of them anonymous.[4] Anonymous works also include The Tale of Igor's Campaign and Praying of Daniel the Immured. Hagiographies (Russian: жития святых, zhitiya svyatykh, "lives of the saints") formed a popular genre of the Old Russian literature. Life of Alexander Nevsky offers a well-known example. Other Russian literary monuments include Zadonschina, Physiologist, Synopsis and A Journey Beyond the Three Seas. Bylinas – oral folk epics – fused Christian and pagan traditions. Medieval Russian literature had an overwhelmingly religious character and used an adapted form of the Church Slavonic language with many South Slavic elements. The first work in colloquial Russian, the autobiography of the archpriest Avvakum, emerged only in the mid-17th century.

18th centuryEdit





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.[8]





Golden AgeEdit


Prose was flourishing as well. The first great Russian novel was Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol. The realistic school of fiction can be said to have begun with Ivan Turgenev. Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Leo Tolstoy soon became internationally renowned to the point that many scholars such as F. R. Leavis have described one or the other as the greatest novelist ever. Ivan Goncharov is remembered mainly for his novel Oblomov. Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote prose satire, while Nikolai Leskov is best remembered for his shorter fiction. Late in the century Anton Chekhov emerged as a master of the short story as well as a leading international dramatist.

Other important 19th-century developments included the fabulist Ivan Krylov; non-fiction writers such as the critic Vissarion Belinsky and the political reformer Alexander Herzen; playwrights such as Aleksandr Griboyedov, Aleksandr Ostrovsky and the satirist Kozma Prutkov (a collective pen name).

Silver AgeEdit




20th centuryEdit

Lenin eraEdit

The first years of the Soviet regime after the October Revolution of 1917, featured a proliferation of avant-garde literature groups. One of the most important was the Oberiu movement (1928–1930s), 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 Yuri Olesha (1899–1960) and Andrei Platonov (1899–1951) and the short-story writers Isaak Babel (1894–1940) and Mikhail Zoshchenko (1894–1958). The OPOJAZ group of literary critics, also known as Russian formalism, was founded in 1916 in close connection with Russian Futurism. Two of its members also produced influential literary works, namely Viktor Shklovsky (1893–1984), whose numerous books (e.g., Zoo, or Letters Not About Love, 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., Young Pushkin: A Novel).

Following the establishment of Bolshevik rule, Mayakovsky 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" 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 "It's Good", Mayakovsky writes about socialist society as the "springtime of humanity". Mayakovsky was instrumental in producing a new type of poetry in which politics played a major part.[11]

Socialist RealismEdit

In the 1930s, Socialist realism became the predominant trend in Russia. 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 Mikhail Bulgakov (1891–1940), author of The Master and Margarita (written 1928–1940, published 1966), and Nobel Prize-winning Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) with his novel Doctor Zhivago (written 1945–1955, published 1957) continued the classical tradition of Russian literature with little or no hope of being published. Their major works would not be published until the Khrushchev Thaw, and the Soviet authorities forced Pasternak to renounce his 1958 Nobel Prize.

Socialist realism’s leading figure was Maxim Gorky, who had laid the foundations of this style with his novel The Mother and play The Enemies (both 1906). His autobiographical trilogy – My Childhood (1913–1914), In the World (1916), and My Universities (1923) – describes his journey from the poor of society to the development of his political consciousness. His novel The Artamanov Business (1925) and his play Egor Bulyshov (1932) depict the decay and inevitable downfall of Russia's ruling classes. 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". Gorky considered the main task of writers to help in the development of the new man in socialist society. Gorky's version of a heroic revolutionary is Pavel Vlasov from the novel The Mother, who displays selflessness and compassion for the working poor, as well as discipline and dedication. Gorky's works became significant for the development of literature in Russia and influential in many parts of the world.[12]

Nikolay Ostrovsky's novel How the Steel Was Tempered (1932–1934) has been among the most successful works of Russian literature,[citation needed] 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.[13] In Russia more than 35 million copies of the book are in circulation.[14] 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 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. The novel has served as an inspiration to youths around the world and played a mobilizing role in Russia's Great Patriotic War.[15][need quotation to verify]

Alexander Fadeyev (1901–1956) achieved noteworthy success in Russia, with tens of millions of copies of his books in circulation in Russia and around the world.[14] Many of Fadeyev's works have been staged and filmed and translated into many languages of Russia and around the world. Fadeyev served as a secretary of the Soviet Writers' Union and as the general secretary of the union's administrative board from 1946 to 1954. The Soviet Union awarded him two Orders of Lenin and various medals. 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. The novel's protagonist, Levinson is a Bolshevik revolutionary who has a high level of political consciousness. The novel The Young Guard (1946), which received the State Prize of the USSR in 1946, focuses on an underground Komsomol group in Krasnodon, Ukraine and their struggle against the fascist occupation.[16]

Émigré writersEdit

Meanwhile, émigré writers, such as poets Vladislav Khodasevich (1886–1939), Georgy Ivanov (1894–1958) and Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866–1949); novelists such as Mark Aldanov (1880s–1957), Gaito Gazdanov (1903–1971) and Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977); and short-story Nobel Prize-winning writer Ivan Bunin (1870–1953), continued to write in exile.

Later Soviet eraEdit

The Khrushchev Thaw (c. 1954 – c. 1964) brought some fresh wind to literature. Poetry became a mass-cultural phenomenon: Bella Akhmadulina (1937–2010), Robert Rozhdestvensky (1932–1994), Andrei Voznesensky (1933–2010), and Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1933–2017), read their poems in stadiums and attracted huge crowds.

Some writers dared to oppose Soviet ideology, like short-story writer Varlam Shalamov (1907–1982) and Nobel Prize-winning novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008), who wrote about life in the gulag camps, or Vasily Grossman (1905–1964), with his description of World War II events countering the Soviet official historiography. Such writers, dubbed "dissidents", could not publish their major works until the 1960s.

But the 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. Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the country. Others, such as Nobel Prize–winning poet Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996); novelists Vasily Aksyonov (1932–2009), Eduard Limonov (1943–2020), Sasha Sokolov (1943–) and Vladimir Voinovich (1932–2018); and short-story writer Sergei Dovlatov (1941–1990), had to emigrate to the West, while Oleg Grigoriev (1943–1992) and Venedikt Yerofeyev (1938–1990) "emigrated" to alcoholism. 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).

Popular Soviet genresEdit

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 of Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio. Alexander Volkov (1891–1977) introduced fantasy fiction 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 Stalin 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: his stories and plays about Timur 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. 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.




Mystery was another popular genre. Detectives by brothers Arkady and Georgy Vayner and spy novels by Yulian Semyonov were best-selling,[18] and many of them were adapted into film or TV in the 1970s and 1980s.




Post-Soviet eraEdit



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, that was relatively new to Russian readers. These genres boomed in the late 1990s, with authors like Sergey Lukyanenko, 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, especially in Kharkiv,[20] 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 members of the Lianosovo group of poets, notably Genrikh Sapgir, Igor Kholin and Vsevolod Nekrasov, who previously chose to refrain from publication in Soviet periodicals, became very influential, especially in Moscow, and the same goes for another masterful experimental poet, Gennady Aigi. Also popular were poets following some other poetic trends, e.g. Vladimir Aristov and Ivan Zhdanov from Poetry Club and Konstantin Kedrov and Elena Katsuba from DOOS, 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 but also Victor Krivulin, Sergey Stratanovsky and Elena Shvarts, were prominent first in the Soviet-times underground – and later in mainstream poetry.

Some other poets, e.g. Sergey Gandlevsky and Dmitry Vodennikov, gained popularity by writing in a retro style, which reflected the sliding of newly-written Russian poetry into being consciously imitative of the patterns and forms developed as early as in the 19th century.

21st centuryEdit

In the 21st century, a new generation of Russian authors appeared differing greatly from the postmodernist Russian prose of the late 20th century, which lead critics to speak about “new realism”.[21] Having grown up after the fall of the Soviet Union, the "new realists" write about every day life, but without using the mystical and surrealist elements of their predecessors.


Leading "new realists" include Ilja Stogoff, Zakhar Prilepin, Alexander Karasyov, Arkady Babchenko, Vladimir Lorchenkov and Alexander Snegiryov.[22]

External influencesEdit

British romantic poetryEdit

Scottish poet Robert Burns became a ‘people’s poet’ in Russia. In Imperial times the Russian aristocracy were so out of touch with the peasantry that Burns, translated into Russian, became a symbol for the ordinary Russian people. A new translation of Burns, begun in 1924 by Samuil Marshak, proved enormously popular selling over 600,000 copies.[23][24]


French literatureEdit

Writers such as Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac were widely influential.[26] Also, Jules Verne inspired several generations of Russian science fiction writers.


Russian literature is not only written by Russians. In the Soviet times such popular writers as Belarusian Vasil Bykaŭ, Kyrgyz Chinghiz Aitmatov and Abkhaz Fazil Iskander wrote some of their books in Russian. Some renowned contemporary authors writing in Russian have been born and live in Ukraine (Andrey Kurkov, H. L. Oldie, Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko) or Baltic States (Garros and Evdokimov, Max Frei). Most Ukrainian fantasy and science fiction authors write in Russian,[27] which gives them access to a much broader audience, and usually publish their books via Russian publishers such as Eksmo, Azbuka and AST.

A number of prominent Russian authors such as novelists Mikhail Shishkin, Rubén Gallego, Julia Kissina, Svetlana Martynchik and Dina Rubina, poets Alexei Tsvetkov and Bakhyt Kenjeev, though born in USSR, live and work in West Europe, North America or Israel.[28][page needed]

Themes in Russian booksEdit


Russian Nobel laureates in LiteratureEdit

See alsoEdit


  2. ^ The Moscow Times The most reading country in the world? Archived 2013-05-10 at the Wayback Machine
    "When mass illiteracy was finally liquidated in the first half of the twentieth century, the proud self-image of Russians as “the most reading nation in the world” emerged – where reading meant, and still means for many, the reading of literature".
  4. ^ Letopisi: Literature of Old Rus'. Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary. ed. by Oleg Tvorogov. Moscow: Prosvescheniye ("Enlightenment"), 1996. (Russian: Летописи // Литература Древней Руси. Биобиблиографический словарь / под ред. О.В. Творогова. – М.: Просвещение, 1996.)
  5. ^ Terras, pp. 221–223
  6. ^ Terras, pp. 474–477
  7. ^ Lang, D.M. “Boileau and Sumarokov: The Manifesto of Russian Classicism.” The Modern Language Review, Vol. 43, No. 4, 1948, p. 502
  9. ^ Terras, pp. 365–366
  10. ^ Offord, Derek (2005). "Denis Fonvizin and the Concept of Nobility: An Eighteenth-century Russian Echo of a Western Debate". European History Quarterly. 35 (1): 10. doi:10.1177/0265691405049200. S2CID 145305528.
  11. ^ Soviet literature: problems and people K. Zelinsky, Progress Publishers. Moscow. 1970. p. 167
  13. ^ "Design Template". Jul 30, 2012. Archived from the original on 2012-07-30.
  14. ^ a b "Подводя итоги XX столетия: книгоиздание. Бестселлер – детище рекламы".
  16. ^ "Фадеев Александр Александрович". Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  17. ^ "Science fiction – literature and performance". Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  18. ^ Sofya Khagi: Boris Akunin and Retro Mode in Contemporary Russian Culture, Toronto Slavic Quarterly
  20. ^ "Kharkov Ukraine". Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  21. ^ "Аристов, Денис (Aristov, Denis) "О природе реализма в современной русской прозе о войне (2000-е годы)" (PDF). Journal Perm State Pedagogical University. 2011. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  22. ^ Yevgeni Popov (21 April 2009). "Who can follow Gogol's footsteps" (PDF). Retrieved 22 April 2013.
  24. ^ Peter Henry. "Sure way of getting Burns all wrong". Archived from the original on December 11, 2004. Retrieved 2009-06-10..
  25. ^ Розанов. Байронизм // Словарь литературных терминов. Т. 1. – 1925 (текст). Retrieved on 2012-06-17.
  26. ^ Stone, Jonathan (2013). Historical Dictionary of Russian Literature. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 53. ISBN 9780810871823.
  27. ^ Oldie, H.L.; Dyachenko, Marina and Sergey; Valentinov, Andrey (2005). Пять авторов в поисках ответа (послесловие к роману "Пентакль") [Five authors in search for answers (an afterword to Pentacle)] (in Russian). Moscow: Eksmo. ISBN 5-699-09313-3. Украиноязычная фантастика переживает сейчас не лучшие дни. ... Если же говорить о фантастике, написанной гражданами Украины в целом, независимо от языка (в основном, естественно, на русском), – то здесь картина куда более радужная. В Украине сейчас работают более тридцати активно издающихся писателей-фантастов, у кого регулярно выходят книги (в основном, в России), кто пользуется заслуженной любовью читателей; многие из них являются лауреатами ряда престижных литературных премий, в том числе и международных.

  28. ^ Katsman, Roman (2016). Nostalgia for a Foreign Land: Studies in Russian-Language Literature in Israel. Boston: Academic Studies Press. ISBN 978-1618115287.


External linksEdit