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Russian Literature
• The history of Russian literature is divided into several periods which can be lengthy or
quite short. Before the adoption of Christianity – first by Princess Olga in 957 and then
by the Great Prince Vladimir in 988 – there was no written language in Russia. If
necessary, Greek, Latin, or Jewish languages were used for written communication.
Literary works like fairy tales, songs, and epics were preserved and passed from
generation to generation as monuments of oral history.

• Old Russian literature covers the period from the eleventh century through the
seventeenth century. The Russian literature of this period is represented by religious and
secular historical texts created in Kievan Rus and then Muscovite Rus. Vivid examples of
literary masterpieces include the Lives of Boris and Gleb, The Tale of Bygone Years, the
Tale of Igor’s Campaign, the Zadonshchina, and many others.
• Russian literature of the eighteenth century is known as the Russian Enlightenment.
Among the founders of Classicism in Russian poetry and prose are Lomonosov,
Fonvizin, and Derzhavin, as well as other authors and enlighteners. Their works are
multifaceted and dedicated to literature, science and other forms of art. For example,
Lomonosov constantly sought to reform the language of literature, to make it the
language of philosophy and science, and advocated for the convergence of literary and
popular language forms. His odes were also among the first works to be written in
accordance with the natural rhythmic structures of the Russian language. Toward the end
of this period, Nikolai Karamzin also established Sentimentalism in poetry and prose. His
stories, such as “Poor Liza,” also represent Enlightenment values in so far as they
represent all people, including serfs and peasants, as human beings.

Background/ key events in Russia:

• Downfall of the Tsar’s imperial dynasty

• Bolshevik revolution
• Gruelling hardships of the Soviet Union regime

Thus, literary realism, historical drama and political satires were prominent earlier in Russian
literature

What do we mean by the Golden Period of Russian Literature?

• Russian literature of the nineteenth century is considered to be the “golden age” of
Russian literature. This is the period when masterpieces of Russian literature, history, and
art entered onto the world stage. For Russians, the genius of Pushkin exemplifies this

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golden age. Having written in all literary genres—narrative poem, lyric, tragedy, the short
story, novel, travelogue and history—it was Pushkin who brought everyday Russian
language into literary use, and it was Pushkin who first explored many of Russian
literature’s major themes. Other writers of the period, such as Griboedov, Lermontov, and
Gogol, as well as their heirs, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov, form the links
of this golden literary chain. Their works have forever entered the classics of the world
literature, and rightly so.

What do we mean by the silver age of Russian Literature?

• The “silver age” of Russian literature represents a rather short period from 1890 to 1921,
a time of tremendous turmoil, war, and revolution. In this turbulent time, however,
Russian poetry flourished, and bold experiments in all forms of art took place. Blok and
Briusov, Gumilev and Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva and Mayakovsky, Esenin and Gorky,
Bunin and Kuprin are the most prominent representatives of silver age literature.

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

• Best known for his realistic fiction

• One of world’s greatest novelist
• Espoused the Christian doctrine of NON RESISTANCE TO EVIL which celebrated
peace, love, reconciliation and forgiveness

• Childhood and Boyhood

• The Cossacks

• The Sevastopol tales

“Tolstoy's first works, entitled Childhood and Boyhood, were autobiographical. He later wrote
The Cossacks, which he published after he was no longer a soldier. Another set of books, the

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Sevastopol Tales, delved into the thoughts and feelings of soldiers, and stood out as an early
example of stream of consciousness writing. 'Stream of consciousness' writing literally allows
the reader to get inside of the head of a character. When a writer uses 'stream of consciousness,'
we see the character's fleeting thoughts and images. It is a natural, informal way a person might
think.”

Had become popular

Anarchist || Non conformist

Youth- published

By this point, Tolstoy was already famous in Russia, but he was proud. He decided to call
himself an 'anarchist' and move to France. Tolstoy didn't want to be lumped in with any one
intellectual group or another. He was a nonconformist. Still caught up in a wild lifestyle, Tolstoy
lost his money to gambling and had to return to Russia. There he published Youth, the third in the
trilogy that began with Childhood.

Major works:

• War and Peace (1869)

• Anna Karenina (1878)
• The Death of Ivan Ilyich
• Resurrection
• Semi autobiographical trilogy :
o Childhood
o Boyhood
o Youth

While Tolstoy was nominated several times for both the Nobel Prize for Literature and Nobel
Peace Prize in the last decade of his life, he never won.

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Anna Karenina:

• Tolstoy’s FIRST self proclaimed novel

• Story of the eponymous Russian society woman
• Who is initially trapped by societal conventions
• She dares to leave her loveless marriage
• For an illicit love and meets with tragic consequences

War and Peace (1869)

• Over 1000 pages long
• 580 unique characters
• Masterpiece of Russian literature
• Follows the lives of a network of aristocratic Russian families at the time of Napoleon’s
invasion

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904):

• Eminent Russian playwright

• Master of Modern short story

Major works:

• The Seagull (1895)

• Uncle Vanya (1897)
• The Cherry Orchard
• Three Sisters
The Seagull

• About lost opportunities and clash between generations

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• The main characters are all artists (guests at a country estate)

• Mme Arkadina || Trigorin || Konstantin || Nina

They are Mme Arkadina, a middle-aged actress; her lover, Trigorin, a successful writer; her son
Konstantin, a writer; and Nina, a young aspiring actress whom Konstantin loves. Mme Arkadina,
jealous of Nina’s youth and promising career, acts cruelly and hatefully toward Konstantin,
belittling his new play and withholding the approval he desperately seeks from her. Nina,
impressed by Trigorin’s fame, ignores Konstantin, who kills a seagull and shows it to her,
perhaps symbolically referring to his broken dreams. All four go their separate ways, but two
years later they are reunited at the same estate. When Nina again rejects Konstantin, he destroys
his writings and shoots himself while his mother, unaware, plays cards in another room.

The Cherry Orchard:

• Drama in 4 acts
• Chekhov’s final play (first performed and published in 1904)
• Chekov insisted that the play was comedy
• However this play is considered as a tragedy (the decline of the charming Ranesvskaya
family )
• Ermolai Lopakhin

Madame Ranevskaya, who has spent five years in Paris to escape grief over her young son’s
death, returns to her home in Russia ridden with debt. She is obliged to decide how to dispose of
her family’s estate, with its beautiful and famous cherry orchard. The coarse but wealthy
merchant Ermolai Lopakhin suggests that Mme Ranevskaya develop the land on which the
orchard sits. Eventually Lopakhin purchases the estate and proceeds with his plans for a housing
development. As the unhappy Ranevskayas leave the estate, the sound of saws can be heard in
the orchard.

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)

• Influential force of 20th century fiction

• Known for his deep and complex psychological explorations into the dark side of human
nature
• His works are grotesque and violent

Major works:

• Notes from Underground

• Crime and Punishment
• The Idiot
• Demons
• The Brothers Karamazov

Crime and Punishment (1866)

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• Psychological analysis of the poor former student RASKOLNIKOV

• HIS THEORY - that he is an extraordinary person who is able to use evil means to
achieve humanitarian ends
• This leads him to murder
• This leads to guilt in him
• Finest study of psychopathology of guilt

At last Raskolnikov turns himself in. He is sentenced to eight years of hard labour in Siberia.
Sonya follows him to Siberia and visits him at every opportunity. Dunya marries Razumikhin.
Raskolnikov does not repent for the murders and continues to emotionally shut out Sonya and
the other prisoners. However, after an illness, he at last comes to the realization that happiness
cannot be achieved by a reasoned plan of existence but must be earned by suffering. He then is
able to accept and return Sonya’s love.

Alexander Pushkin:
Eugene Onegin:
• A novel in verse
• Eponymous protagonist is a SUPERFLUOUS MAN
• 389 14 line stanzas (total lines are 5446) of iambic tetrameter
• AbAbCCddEffEgg
• (upper case represent feminine rhymes and lower represent masculine ones)
• Onegin stanza or Pushkin sonnet
• (Superfluous man- russian literary concept of Byronic hero, mostly a person born into
wealth

Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852)

• His works are considered as the foundation of 19th century Russian realism

Dead Souls (1842):

• Chronicles the splendid travels and epic adventures of Pavel Ivanovich

• Celebrated for its satirical approach
• It represents the Russian provincial life in a realistic portrait

The Overcoat

• Narrates the life and death of an impoverished government clerk living in St Petersburg
• He seeks to buy a new overcoat after being relentlessly teased by his colleagues

Soviet and Russian Literature:

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• 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. One characteristic feature of literature during the Soviet period was the
development of “socialist realism” as the official literary style, according to which Soviet
writers depicted Soviet reality in positive terms, focusing on its revolutionary,
educational, and humanistic achievements, and propagating the ideas of the communist
party. As IUrii Olesha once said, Soviet writers were the “engineers of human souls.”
Among the most notable Soviet realist writers were: Maxim Gorky, Nikolai Ostrovskii,
Mikhail Sholokhov, Fedor Gladkov, Aleksandr Fadeev, and others. Behind the curtain of
socialist realism, however, were many authors who refused to conform to Soviet realism.
Numbered among these anti-Soviet writers are: Mikhail Bulgakov, Boris Pasternak,
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Varlam Shalamov, Andrei Siniavskii, Iosif Brodskii, and many
others.