Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia, 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. Mikhail Lermontov was one of the most important poets and novelists. 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. Other important figures of Russian realism were Ivan Goncharov, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin and Nikolai Leskov. 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, Sergei Yesenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Marina Tsvetaeva. This era produced some first-rate novelists and short-story writers, such as Aleksandr Kuprin and Nobel Prize winners Ivan Bunin, Leonid Andreyev, Fyodor Sologub, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Alexander Belyaev, Andrei Bely and Maxim Gorky.
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright of Ukrainian origin.
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West.
Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin was a Russian poet, musician and novelist, a prominent contributor to the Silver Age of Russian Poetry.
Nikolay Alexeyevich Nekrasov was a Russian poet, writer, critic and publisher, whose deeply compassionate poems about the Russian peasantry made him a hero of liberal and radical circles in the Russian intelligentsia of the mid-nineteenth century, particularly as represented by Vissarion Belinsky and Nikolay Chernyshevsky. He is credited with introducing into Russian poetry ternary meters and the technique of dramatic monologue. As the editor of several literary journals, notably Sovremennik, Nekrasov was also singularly successful and influential.
Dead Souls is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. The novel chronicles the travels and adventures of Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov and the people whom he encounters. These people typify the Russian middle aristocracy of the time. Gogol himself saw his work as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book characterised it as a "novel in verse". Gogol intended the novel to be the first part of a three-volume work, but burned the manuscript of the second part shortly before his death. Although the novel ends in mid-sentence, it is regarded by some as complete in the extant form.
Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev, better known by the pen name Andrei Bely or Biely, was a Russian novelist, Symbolist poet, theorist and literary critic. He was a committed anthroposophist and follower of Rudolf Steiner. His novel Petersburg (1913/1922) was regarded by Vladimir Nabokov as the third-greatest masterpiece of modernist literature. The Andrei Bely Prize, one of the most important prizes in Russian literature, was named after him. His poems were set to music and performed by Russian singer-songwriters.
Petersburg is a novel by Russian writer Andrei Bely. A Symbolist work, it has been compared to other "city novels" like Ulysses and Berlin Alexanderplatz. The first edition was completed in November 1913 and published serially from October 1913 to March 1914. It received little attention and was not translated into English until 1959 by John Cournos, over 45 years after it was written.
George Reavey was a Russian-born Irish surrealist poet, publisher, translator and art collector. He was also Samuel Beckett's first literary agent. In addition to his own poetry, Reavey's translations and critical prose helped introduce 20th century Russian poetry to an English-speaking audience. He was also the first publisher to bring out a collection of English translations of the French surrealist poet Paul Éluard.
Aleksey Feofilaktovich Pisemsky was a Russian novelist and dramatist who was regarded as an equal of Ivan Turgenev and Fyodor Dostoyevsky in the late 1850s, but whose reputation suffered a spectacular decline after his fall-out with Sovremennik magazine in the early 1860s. A realistic playwright, along with Aleksandr Ostrovsky he was responsible for the first dramatization of ordinary people in the history of Russian theatre. "Pisemsky's great narrative gift and exceptionally strong grip on reality make him one of the best Russian novelists" according to D.S. Mirsky.
Vasily Trofimovich Narezhny was a Russian Imperial writer best known for his satirical depiction of provincial mores in the vein of the 18th-century picaresque novel.
Aleksey Mikhailovich Remizov was a Russian modernist writer whose creative imagination veered to the fantastic and bizarre. Apart from literary works, Remizov was an expert calligrapher who sought to revive this visual art in Russia.
Poshlost or poshlost' is a Russian word for a particular negative human character trait or man-made thing or idea. It has been cited as an example of a so-called untranslatable word, as there is no single exact one-word English equivalent. It carries much cultural baggage in Russia and has been discussed at length by various writers.
Patrick Donald Rayfield OBE is an English academic and Emeritus Professor of Russian and Georgian at Queen Mary University of London. He is an author of books about Russian and Georgian literature, and about Joseph Stalin and his secret police. He is also a series editor for books about Russian writers and intelligentsia. He has translated Georgian, Russian and Uzbek poets and prose writers.
Saint Petersburg has always been known for its high-quality cultural life, and its best known museum is the Hermitage.
John Elsworth is an English academic and translator, specialising in Russian literature. He studied Modern Languages at St John’s College, Cambridge, and also spent a year at Moscow University. He is Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies at the University of Manchester, where he taught from 1987 to 2004. He also taught at the University of East Anglia, the University of Virginia and the University of California, Berkeley.
The Narodniks were members of a movement of the Russian Empire intelligentsia in the 1860s and 1870s, some of whom became involved in revolutionary agitation against tsarism. Their ideology, known as Narodism, Narodnism or Narodnichestvo, was a form of agrarian socialism though it is often misunderstood as populism.
The Petty Demon, also translated as The Little Demon, is a Symbolist novel by Russian writer Fyodor Sologub. It was published in a stand-alone edition in 1907 and quickly became popular, having ten printings during the author's lifetime.
Mark Lvovich Slonim was a Russian politician, literary critic, scholar and translator. He was a lifelong member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and, in 1917, served as its deputy for Bessarabia in the Russian Constituent Assembly. He joined the Samara Government during the early phases of the Civil War, opposing both the Bolsheviks and the conservative elements of the White movement. Assigned to his party's Foreign Delegation, Slonim lobbied unsuccessfully for the return of Bessarabia to Russia during the Paris Peace Conference. After a short stay in Tuscany, he settled in Czechoslovakia in 1922, an editor of Volya Rossii review.
Ivan Sergeyevich Rukavishnikov was a Russian Silver Age symbolist poet, writer, playwright and translator from Ukrainian language.
