Russian literature
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its emigrés;, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union. With the break up of the USSR several ex-Soviet writers who wrote in Russian are also claimed as part of the tradition of the countries they were born in or were ethnically or culturally associated with.
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2 Petrine era 3 19th century 4 Silver Age 5 Soviet era 6 Post-Soviet era 7 See also 8 External links |
Early history
Old Russian literature consists of several sparse masterpieces written in the Old Russian language (not to be confused with Church Slavonic). Anonymous The Tale of Igor's Campaign (Слово о Полку Игореве, Slovo o Polku Igoreve) is one of these. Bylinas, oral folk epics, fused Christian and pagan traditions. Medieval Russian literature was overwhelmingly religious in its character and used the an adapted form of thr Church Slavonic language. The first work in colloquial Russian,
the autobiography of archpriest Avvakum, was created only in the mid-17th century.
Petrine era
The "Westernization" of Russia (commonly associated with the names of Tsar Peter the Great and Tsarina Catherine the Great) coincided with reform of the Russian alphabet and increased tolerance of the idea of employing the popular language for general literary purposes. Authors like Dmitri Kantemir, Vasily Trediakovsky, and Mikhail Lomonosov in the earlier 18th century paved the way for poets like Derzhavin, playwrights like Sumarokov and Fonvizin and prose writers like Karamzin and Radishchev.
19th century
Romanticism permitted a flowering of especially poetic talent: the names of Zhukovsky and Pushkin came to the fore, followed by Mikhail Lermontov.
Nineteenth-century developments included Ivan Krylov the fabulist; non-fiction writers such as Belinsky and Aleksandr Herzen; playwrights such as Griboedov and Ostrovsky; poets such as Evgeny Baratynsky, Konstantin Batyushkov, Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov, Alexander Nekrasov, Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy, Fyodor Tyutchev, and Afanasij Fet; Kosma Prutkov(a collective pen name) the satirist; and a group of widely-recognised novelists such as Nikolai Gogol, Lev Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leskov, Ivan Turgenev, Saltykov-Shchedrin and Goncharov.
Silver Age
Other genres came to the fore with the approach of the 20th century. Anton Chekhov excelled in writing short stories and drama, and Anna Akhmatova represented innovative lyricists.
The beginning of the 20th century is known as the Silver Age of Russian poetry. Anna Akhmatova, Innokenty Annensky, Andrej Belyj, Alexander Blok, Valery Bryusov, Marina Tsvetaeva, Sergei Esenin ,Nikolay Gumilyov, Daniil Kharms, Velimir Khlebnikov ,Osip Mandelstam, Vladimir Mayakovsky,Boris Pasternak, Fedor Sologub, Maximilian Voloshin are among the most famous authors of that period.
Soviet era
Sovietization of Russia affected literature after 1917. Maxim Gorky, Nobel Prize winner Mikhail Sholokhov, Valentin Kataev, Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoi, Vladimir Mayakovsky,
Ilf and Petrov came to prominence. Whilst Socialist realism gained official support in the Soviet Union, some of the writers were secretly continuing the classical tradition of Russian literature: Mikhail Bulgakov, Boris Pasternak, Andrei Platonov, Osip Mandelstam, Isaac Babel, Vassily Grossman, writing "under the table", with the only hope of being published after their deaths. The Serapion Brothers insisted on the right to create a literature independent of political ideology. This brought them into conflict with the government. The experimental art of the Oberiuts was also not tolerated.
Meanwhile, émigré writers such as Nobel Prize winner Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin, Alexandr Kuprin, Andrey Bely, Marina Tsvetaeva and Vladimir Nabokov continued to flourish in exile.
In post- Stalin Russia the Socialist realism was still the only permitted style; writers like Nobel Prize winner Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, who built his works on the legacy of the gulag camps, or Venedikt Erofeev, continued the tradition of clandestine literature. In the post-Communist Russia most of these works were published and became a part of mainstream culture. However, even before the decay of the Soviet Union, tolerance to non-mainstream art was continuously increasing. Bulgakov, Solzhenitsyn and Varlam Shalamov were published in the 60th. Social criticism of the science fiction of Strugatsky brothers and the literature of the Mitkis became popular. Another post-Stalin development was the bard poetry.
In the late Soviet era emigre authors like Nobel prize winner Joseph Brodsky and short story writer Sergei Dovlatov were successful in the West, but known in the Soviet Union only in Samizdat.
Post-Soviet era
In the end of the 20th century and the early 21st century Russian literature is a difficult period, with relatively few writers raising above the mass of pulp fiction, such as Victor Pelevin or Vladimir Sorokin. Of course, only history will reveal the final score of these times.
In early 21st century there have been a considerable interest in reading public in Russia for new good literature. There a lot of new names, new publishing companies, new brands and literature series.Traditional russian prose is still popular, there are distinctive names from russian province, for example Nina Gorlanova from Perm with her stories about everyday problems and joys of provincial intelligentsia.
A very successful branch of new literature are detective stories, thrillers. An interesting phenomenon is a huge interest for ironical detective stories by Darya Dontsova. She has written about 50 novels [as of the time of writing], and her books have been published in millions of copies and even translated in Europe.
Generations of winter ( in russian ”Moskovskaya saga” ) is a novel by russian writer Vassily Aksyonov was published in USA. Many critics have praised this novel as a new Doctor Zhivago large-scale russian novel, which tells the story of a russian family Gradov struggling to survive in the Stalin era.
Several Russian writers have been rather popular in the West, such as Tatyana Tolstaya and especially Lyudmila Ulitskaya. Detective story writer Boris Akunin with his series about 19th century sleuth Erast Fandorin is being published in Europe and USA. Alexandra Marinina, the most popular female detective stories writer in Russia has been successful in publishing her books around Europe, especially in Germany.
Frankfurt Book Fair 2003 elected Russia as its special guest this year.
See List of Russians and List of Russian authors for more names.
See also
External links