Russian literature

Russian literature, fiction, poetry, prose, and religious writings written in the Russian language. Throughout its history, Russian literature has been characterized by a deep concern for moral, religious, and philosophical problems.

Early literature

The Byzantine influence that accompanied Russia's conversion to Christianity in the late 900s A.D. also caused Church Slavonic to be adopted as the language of religion and literature. Church Slavonic was used in the Balkans and Russia as the language of secular and religious writings and served in much the same way as Latin did in the West. The earliest writings were primarily the works of clergymen and were religious in content and didactic in purpose although the chronicles, records of historic events attributed to the friar Nestor, were nonreligious and had some literary quality. More important than these were the blyiny, oral folk lays with a mixture of pagan and Christian themes, that sometimes attained the level of epic poetry. The finest piece of early Russian literature was The Song of Igor's Campaign (c. 1187, author unknown), describing an unsuccessful campaign by a Russian prince against an Asian tribe, the Polovtsians.

Beginning of modern Russian literature

Western influence became important in the 17th century when numerous translations appeared and the first theater in Russia was established (1662). The most notable writer of the period was the conservative priest Avvakum (martyred 1682), who opposed the changes in the ritual of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1650s that led to the great schism. Under Tsar Peter I (the Great), European influence increased, the Russian alphabet was revised, and Russian works were printed in the vernacular. A monk, Simeon Polotsky, introduced a rigid syllabic system of verse, whereby each line of poetry contained a fixed number of syllables with regularly placed pauses. Prince Antioch Kantemir (1703–44) wrote verse satires supporting Peter the Great's reforms, using the syllabic system. Mikhail Lomonosov, a trained scientist, was a noted writer and poet. He was most noted as the founder of modern Russian literature and a precursor of classicism. In his odes, he used the new tonic form of versification (regular patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables) which was more suitable to Russian than the strict syllabic system, and he thereby changed the nature of Russian prosody.

Classicism in Russian literature

Inspired by Lomonosov and influenced by Western models, Russian writers such as Alexander Sumarokov mixed European style with Russian themes. This is especially true of his fables and his plays, which helped begin Russian drama. His Khorev (1747) was the first classical tragedy in Russian. The plays of Denis I. Fonzivin (1745–92) mixed satire with more realistic concerns while the outstanding poet of the period, Gavril R. Derzhavin, wrote odes praising Catherine and ridiculing the vices of the court around her, as in his “Ode to Felitsa” (1783). Toward the end of the 18th century, Ivan A. Krylov (1768–1844) wrote many fables, some of them adapted from Aesop and La Fontaine, but most were original.

Romanticism in Russian literature

Vasili Zhukovsky and Konstantin Batyushkov were the leading poets of the preromantic period. In the 1820s, a new group of poets introduced the Golden Age of Russian poetry. The greatest of these was Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799–1837), who wrote the remarkable historical play Boris Godunov in 1825. Other poets of the age included Yevgeny Baratynsky, Baron Anton Delvig, and Wilhelm Kuchelbecker. By the end of the romantic period, Russian writers turned more to social criticism, even under the strict censorship of Tsar Nicholas I. Among these were Mikhail Lermontov, whose A Hero of Our Times (1840) was the first psychological novel in Russian literature. The poet Fyodor Tyutchev wrote pessimistic verse, as exemplified in his “A Vision” (1829) and “Holy Night” (1849). The most important writer of this time was Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (1809–52). He is best known for his socio-political satires, such as his famous play The Inspector General (1836), still performed in many countries today.

Realism in Russian literature

Around mid-19th century began the period of great Russian novels, which attempted to depict Russian life, customs, and politics in a realistic manner. Ivan Turgenev's A Sportsman's Sketches (1852) and Fathers and Sons (1862) showed his interest in social themes and particularly in character analysis, as did his gentle comedy A Month in the Country (completed 1850). Count Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), one of the greatest of Russian novelists, expanded the form to include deep philosophical probing as well as realistic depictions of Russian life and people, as exemplified in his two great works War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1875–77). The other great Russian novelist of the period, Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–81), wrote novels of extraordinary psychological penetration. Among his most famous works are Crime and Punishment (1866), The Possessed (1871–72), and The Brothers Karamazov (1879–80). Toward the end of the century, the playwright and short story writer Anton P. Chekhov (1860–1904) portrayed Russian life with a kind of lyric realism in such plays as Uncle Vanya (1899), The Three Sisters (1901), and The Cherry Orchard (1904). Prefiguring the Russian Revolution was the playwright and novelist Maxim Gorki (1868–1936) whose works depicted the terrible plight of the Russian poor and downtrodden. His most famous play is The Lower Depths (1902).

Russian literature in the h Century (20t)

The unsettled times before and during the revolution in 1917 spawned new literary trends like symbolism, as exemplified in the poets Alexander Blok and Andrey Bely. Post-symbolist poets included Anna Akmatova and Osip Mendelstam, and futurists found a strong voice in the remarkable poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. Boris L. Pasternak was also associated with the futurists, but is most known for his lyric poetry and his later novel Doctor Zhivago (begun 1948, published 1957) for which he won the Nobel Prize. The terrible years of Stalin's repressive rule took a toll on Russian literature, but in the 1960s a new generation of writers moved to reassert liberal ideas. Among them are Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Andre Voznesensky (poets) and prose writers Vasily Aksyonov and Vasily Shukshin. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, an outspoken critic of communism, wrote about the Stalin repression (The Gulag Archipelago, 1918 to 1956, published in the West from 1973 to 1976). He was exiled, but with the changes in Russia in the late 1980s, the banishment was revoked. It is hoped that a more liberal Russia will encourage a free and creative literature.