Russian literature - Early history, Petrine era, Golden Age, Silver Age, Soviet era, Post-Soviet era

The development of Russian literature was delayed until the 18th-c. Before this time there was a rich and varied oral tradition of folk tales and byliny or epic songs, supplemented from the 16th-c by historically-based material. Some Western influence was relayed via Poland in the 17th-c, but it was French classicism which provided the real stimulus for the philologist Mikhail Lomonosov, the poet Gavril Derzhavin, the fables of Ivan Krylov (1769–1844), and the dramatist Aleksandr Griboedov (1795–1829). Aleksandr Pushkin transcended all influences to become a major figure in both prose and verse; the Byronic novel in verse, Evgeny Onegin (1828), is his most characteristic work. The legacy of Pushkin has been divided between Romanticism and the Realism which has haunted Russian literature. The poet Mikhail Lermontov was drawn to both; as was the novelist Nikolai Gogol, perceiving like Dickens the fantastic side of ordinary life. The novels of Ivan Turgenev and Ivan Goncharov reflected social problems, as was urged by the influential critics Vissarion Belinsky (1811–48) and Nikolai Chernyshevsky (1828–89). Meanwhile, poets such as Fyodor Tyuchev (1803–73) and Afanasi Fet (1820–92) ignored the Realist initiative, as did Nikolai Leskov (1831–95) with his stories of the exotic and grotesque.

Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky evade these categorizations. Tolstoy's War and Peace (1863–9) and Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866) simultaneously explore the materiality and the mystery of human experience. The stories and plays of Anton Chekhov are also too subtle for simple classification. In the 20th-c, the Symbolists Aleksandr Blok, Isaak Babel, and Andrei Bely, followed by the Acmeists Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam, and the Futurists Vladimir Mayakovsky and Viktor Khlebnikov (1885–1922), reclaimed the world of poetry: but post-revolutionary Russia was generally hostile to such work, as it was to the poems and novels of Boris Pasternak. The official socialist Realism privileged the materialist fiction of Maxim Gorky and Mikhail Sholokhov. Much literature circulated unpublished (samizdat) or was published abroad (tamizdat) by such writers as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Joseph Brodsky, and the lyric poet Irina Ratushinskaya (1954– ).

Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union. Prior to the nineteenth century Russia produced very little, if any, internationally read literature, but in the nineteenth century Russian literature underwent an astounding golden age, beginning with the poet Pushkin and culminating in possibly the two greatest novelists in the history of world literature, Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Russia has remained a leading nation in literature since that time, although Russian literature declined under the didactic limitations of the Soviet regime; nonetheless, dissidents like Solzhenitsyn and Boris Pasternak produced world-renowned Russian literature in the twentieth century. With the break up of the USSR different countries and cultures may lay claim to various ex-Soviet writers who wrote in Russian on the basis of birth or of ethnic or cultural associations.

Early history

Old Russian literature consists of several sparse masterpieces written in the Old Russian language (not to be confused with the contemporaneous Church Slavonic). The so-called жития святых (zhitiya svyatikh, lives of the saints) formed a popular genre of the Old Russian literature. Other Russian literary monuments include Zadonschina, Physiologist, 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. The first work in colloquial Russian, the autobiography of archpriest Avvakum, emerged only in the mid-17th century.

Petrine era

The "Westernization" of Russia, commonly associated with Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, coincided with a reform of the Russian alphabet and increased tolerance of the idea of employing the popular language for general literary purposes.

Golden Age

The 19th century is traditionally referred to as the "Golden Age" of Russian literature. He is credited with both crystalizing the literary Russian language and introducing a new level of artistry to Russian literature.

Silver Age

Other genres came to the fore with the approach of the 20th century.

The beginning of the 20th century ranks as the Silver Age of Russian poetry.

Soviet era

Sovietization of Russia affected literature after 1917. Maxim Gorky, Nobel Prize winner Mikhail Sholokhov, Valentin Kataev, Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoi, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Ilf and Petrov came to prominence as part of Soviet literature. Whilst Socialist realism gained official support in the Soviet Union, some of the writers -- such as Mikhail Bulgakov, Boris Pasternak, Andrei Platonov, Osip Mandelstam, Yury Trifonov, Isaac Babel and Vasily Grossman -- secretly continued the classical tradition of Russian literature, writing "under the table", with no hope of publishing such works until after their deaths.

In post-Stalin Russia, Socialist realism remained 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 late Soviet era émigré authors like Nobel prize winner Joseph Brodsky and short story writer Sergei Dovlatov became successful in the West, but remained known in the Soviet Union only in samizdat.

Post-Soviet era

The end of the 20th century and the early 21st century has proven a difficult period for Russian literature, with relatively few authors, such as Victor Pelevin or Vladimir Sorokin, producing distinctive fiction.

In the early 21st century the reading public in Russia has shown considerable interest in new quality literature. Many new authors have emerged, along with new publishing companies, new brands and new literature series. Traditional Russian prose remains popular, and distinctive work has come out of the Russian provinces: for example Nina Gorlanova from Perm has written stories about the everyday problems and joys of the provincial intelligentsia.

Widely popular in teen and early-twenty's audience gained a humoristic fantasy, sci-fi or mixed literature, mostly known for Andrey Belyanin's books.

Detective stories and thrillers have proven a very successful genre of new Russian literature: note the interesting phenomenon of the huge interest in ironic detective stories by Darya Dontsova.

Generations of winter ( in Russian: Moskovskaya saga ), a novel by the Russian writer Vasily Aksyonov, has appeared in the USA. Many critics have praised this novel as a new Doctor Zhivago large-scale Russian novel, which tells the story of the Russian Gradov family struggling to survive in the Stalin era.

Several Russian writers have become rather popular in the West, such as Tatyana Tolstaya and (especially) Lyudmila Ulitskaya. Important Russian language writers in Ukraine are Aleksandr Abramovic Bejderman and Andrey Kurkov.

Themes in Russian literature

Suffering, often as a means of redemption, is a recurrent theme in Russian literature.

The 2003 Frankfurt Book Fair selected Russia as its special guest of the year.

See List of Russians and List of Russian authors for more names.