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- Jeffrey Somers
- "The Brothers Karamazov," by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The argument over which novel is Dostoevsky’s greatest can stretch out to insane lengths, but "The Brothers Karamazov" is always in the running.
- "Day of the Oprichnik," by Vladimir Sorokin. Something often misunderstood by Western readers is how the past informs Russia’s present; it’s a nation that can trace many of its current attitudes, problems, and culture back centuries to the time of the Tsars and the serfs.
- "Crime and Punishment," Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky’s other incredible classic is a deep-dive study of Russian society that remains surprisingly timely and eternally genius.
- "The Dream Life of Sukhanov," by Olga Grushin. Grushin’s novel doesn’t get the same attention as, say, "1984," but it’s just as horrifying in the way it outlines what it’s like to live in a dystopian dictatorship.
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia, 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.
- The Tale of Igor's Campaign (1185) This "tale of woe" about Prince Igor's unsuccessful campaign against the Polovtsians, a Turkic nomadic people, is one of the oldest surviving works of Russian literature, believed to have been written around 1185.
- The Life of Archpriest Avvakum, Written by Himself (1672) It is with the genre of hagiography that all ancient Russian literature essentially begins.
- Russian folktales. Folktales were passed down orally from generation to generation; even adults listened to them in the evening while weaving or sewing or doing other work.
- Alexander Radishchev. Journey from Petersburg to Moscow (1790) As a civil servant, Radishchev traveled many times between Russia’s two capitals and observed the lives of the peasants along the way.
- Overview
- Old Russian literature (10th–17th centuries)
Russian literature, the body of written works produced in the Russian language, beginning with the Christianization of Kievan Rus in the late 10th century.
The unusual shape of Russian literary history has been the source of numerous controversies. Three major and sudden breaks divide it into four periods—pre-Petrine (or Old Russian), Imperial, post-Revolutionary, and post-Soviet. The reforms of Peter I (the Great; reigned 1682–1725), who rapidly Westernized the country, created so sharp a divide with the past that it was common in the 19th century to maintain that Russian literature had begun only a century before. The 19th century’s most influential critic, Vissarion Belinsky, even proposed the exact year (1739) in which Russian literature began, thus denying the status of literature to all pre-Petrine works. The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Bolshevik coup later in the same year created another major divide, eventually turning “official” Russian literature into political propaganda for the communist state. Finally, Mikhail Gorbachev’s ascent to power in 1985 and the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in 1991 marked another dramatic break. What is important in this pattern is that the breaks were sudden rather than gradual and that they were the product of political forces external to literary history itself.
The most celebrated period of Russian literature was the 19th century, which produced, in a remarkably short period, some of the indisputable masterworks of world literature. It has often been noted that the overwhelming majority of Russian works of world significance were produced within the lifetime of one person, Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910). Indeed, many of them were written within two decades, the 1860s and 1870s, a period that perhaps never has been surpassed in any culture for sheer concentrated literary brilliance.
Russian literature, especially of the Imperial and post-Revolutionary periods, has as its defining characteristics an intense concern with philosophical problems, a constant self-consciousness about its relation to the cultures of the West, and a strong tendency toward formal innovation and defiance of received generic norms. The combination of formal radicalism and preoccupation with abstract philosophical issues creates the recognizable aura of Russian classics.
Britannica Quiz
Poetry: First Lines
The conventional term “Old Russian literature” is anachronistic for several reasons. The authors of works written during this time obviously did not think of themselves as “old Russians” or as predecessors of Tolstoy. Moreover, the term, which represents the perspective of modern scholars seeking to trace the origin of later Russian works, obscures...
- Gary Saul Morson
- Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) We, Russians, used to say that Pushkin is our everything (and is praised and loved much more than anyone else). Having died aged at just 37 years of age, this genius managed to cover an enormous amount of topics, genres and forms.
- Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) The first satiric and comedic writer, whose works are incredibly and paradoxically relevant even today. Gogol is an author of comedic plays that are still staged in theaters across the country.
- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) This author doesn’t need an additional introduction and is, probably, the most famous (and most prolific) Russian writer. His full collection of works consists of 90 volumes, everything that he wrote during his 82 years of life, including a huge diary and many letters he exchanged with a wide circle of friends.
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) Fyodr Dostoevsky had a dramatic life: at 28 years old, he was arrested for spreading banned books and sent to prison in Siberia.
Aug 5, 2022 · Soviet literature refers to the literature of all the Soviet peoples from the fifteen republics of the USSR, written in more than 88 languages, with Russian as the predominant language.
These are books that left a mark on history, expanded the possibilities of literature, influenced the development of language, thought and society, reported something new about the world and man - and entered the Russian literary canon.
