to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part

of what was historically Rus', Russia or the Soviet Union. Roots of Russian

literature can be traced to the Middle Ages, when epics and chronicles in Old

Russian 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. The first

great Russian novelist was Nikolai Gogol. Then came Ivan Turgenev, who

mastered both short stories and novels. Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky soon

became internationally renowned. 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, Osip Mandelstam, Sergei

Yesenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Marina Tsvetaeva and Boris Pasternak. This era

produced some first-rate novelists and short-story writers, such as Aleksandr

Kuprin, Nobel Prize winner Ivan Bunin, Leonid Andreyev, Fedor Sologub, Aleksey

Remizov, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Andrei Bely.

After the Revolution of 1917, Russian literature split into Soviet and white

émigré parts. While the Soviet Union assured universal literacy and a highly

developed book printing industry, it also enforced ideological censorship. In

the 1930s Socialist realism became the predominant trend in Russia. Its leading

figure was Maxim Gorky, who laid the foundations of this style. Nikolay

Ostrovsky's novel How the Steel Was Tempered has been among the most

successful works of Russian literature. Alexander Fadeyev achieved success in

Russia. Various émigré writers, such as poets Vladislav Khodasevich, Georgy

Ivanov and Vyacheslav Ivanov; novelists such as Mark Aldanov, Gaito Gazdanov and

Vladimir Nabokov; and short story Nobel Prize winning writer Ivan Bunin,

continued to write in exile. The Khrushchev Thaw brought some fresh wind

to literature and poetry became a mass cultural phenomenon. This "thaw" did not

last long; in the 1970s, some of the most prominent authors were banned from

publishing and prosecuted for their anti-Soviet sentiments.

The end of the 20th century was a difficult period for Russian literature,

with few distinct voices. Among the most discussed authors of this period were

Victor Pelevin, who gained popularity with short stories and novels, novelist

and playwright Vladimir Sorokin, and the poet Dmitry Prigov. In the 21st century,

a new generation of Russian authors appeared, differing greatly from the

postmodernist Russian prose of the late 20th century, which lead critics to

speak about “new realism”. Leading "new realists" include Ilja Stogoff, Zakhar

Prilepin, Alexander Karasyov, Arkadi Babchenko, Vladimir Lorchenkov,

Alexander Snegiryov and the political author Sergej Shargunov.

Russian authors significantly contributed almost to all known genres

of the literature. Russia had five Nobel Prize in literature laureates. As of

2011, Russia was the fourth largest book producer in the world in terms of

published titles. A popular folk saying claims Russians are "the world's most

reading nation". Early history

Old Russian literature consists of several masterpieces written in the Old

Russian language. Main type of Old Russian historical literature were

chronicles, most of them were anonymous. Anonymous works also include The Tale of

Igor's Campaign and Praying of Daniel the Immured. Hagiographies formed a

popular genre of the Old Russian literature. Life of Alexander Nevsky

offers a well-known example. Other Russian literary monuments include

Zadonschina, Physiologist, Synopsis and A Journey Beyond the Three Seas. Bylinas

– oral folk epics – fused Christian and pagan traditions. 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 the archpriest Avvakum,

emerged only in the mid-17th century. 18th century

After taking the throne at the end of the 17th century, Peter the Great's

influence on the Russian culture would extend far into the 18th century.

Peter's reign during the beginning of the 18th century initiated a series of

modernizing changes in Russian literature. The reforms he implemented

encouraged Russian artists and scientists to make innovations in their

crafts and fields with the intention of creating an economy and culture

comparable. Peter's example set a precedent for the remainder of the 18th

century as Russian writers began to form clear ideas about the proper use and

progression of the Russian language. Through their debates regarding

versification of the Russian language and tone of Russian literature, the

writers in the first half of the 18th century were able to lay foundation for

the more poignant, topical work of the late 18th century.

Satirist Antiokh Dmitrievich Kantemir, 1708–1744, was one of the earliest

Russian writers not only to praise the ideals of Peter I's reforms but the

ideals of the growing Enlightenment movement in Europe. Kantemir's works

regularly expressed his admiration for Peter, most notably in his epic

dedicated to the emperor entitled Petrida. More often, however, Kantemir

indirectly praised Peter's influence through his satiric criticism of

Russia's “superficiality and obscurantism,” which he saw as

manifestations of the backwardness Peter attempted to correct through his

reforms. Kantemir honored this tradition of reform not only through his support

for Peter, but by initiating a decade-long debate on the proper

syllabic versification using the Russian language.

Vasily Kirillovich Trediakovsky, a poet, playwright, essayist, translator and

contemporary to Antiokh Kantemir, also found himself deeply entrenched in

Enlightenment conventions in his work with the Russian Academy of Sciences and

his groundbreaking translations of French and classical works to the

Russian language. A turning point in the course of Russian literature, his

translation of Paul Tallemant's work Voyage to the Isle of Love, was the

first to use the Russian vernacular as opposed the formal and outdated

Church-Slavonic. This introduction set a precedent for secular works to be

composed in the vernacular, while sacred texts would remain in Church-Slavonic.

However, his work was often incredibly theoretical and scholarly, focused on

promoting the versification of the language with which he spoke.

While Trediakovsky's approach to writing is often described as highly erudite,

the young writer and scholarly rival to Trediakovsky, Alexander Petrovich

Sumarokov, 1717–1777, was dedicated to the styles of French classicism.

Sumarokov's interest in the form of French literature mirrored his devotion

to the westernizing spirit of Peter the Great's age. Although he often disagreed

with Trediakovsky, Sumarokov also advocated the use of simple, natural

language in order to diversify the audience and make more efficient use of

the Russian language. Like his colleagues and counterparts, Sumarokov

extolled the legacy of Peter I, writing in his manifesto Epistle on Poetry, “The

great Peter hurls his thunder from the Baltic shores, the Russian sword

glitters in all corners of the universe”. Peter the Great's policies of

westernization and displays of military prowess naturally attracted Sumarokov

and his contemporaries. Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, in

particular, expressed his gratitude for and dedication to Peter's legacy in his

unfinished Peter the Great, Lomonosov's works often focused on themes of the

awe-inspiring, grandeur nature, and was therefore drawn to Peter because of the

magnitude of his military, architectural and cultural feats. In contrast to

Sumarokov's devotion to simplicity, Lomonosov favored a belief in a

hierarchy of literary styles divided into high, middle and low. This style

facilitated Lomonosov's grandiose, high minded writing and use of both

vernacular and Church-Slavonic. The influence of Peter I and debates

over the function and form of literature as it related to the Russian language in

the first half of the 18th century set a stylistic precedent for the writers

during the reign of Catherine the Great in the second half of the century.

However, the themes and scopes of the works these writers produced were often

more poignant, political and controversial. Alexander Nikolayevich

Radishchev, for example, shocked the Russian public with his depictions of

the socio-economic condition of the serfs. Empress Catherine II condemned

this portrayal, forcing Radishchev into exile in Siberia.

Others, however, picked topics less offensive to the autocrat. Nikolay

Karamzin, 1766–1826, for example, is known for his advocacy of Russian

writers adopting traits in the poetry and prose like a heightened sense of

emotion and physical vanity, considered to be feminine at the time as well as

supporting the cause of female Russian writers. Karamzin's call for male

writers to write with femininity was not in accordance with the Enlightenment

ideals of reason and theory, considered masculine attributes. His works were

thus not universally well received; however, they did reflect in some areas

of society a growing respect for, or at least ambivalence toward, a female ruler

in Catherine the Great. This concept heralded an era of regarding female

characteristics in writing as an abstract concept linked with attributes

of frivolity, vanity and pathos. Some writers, on the other hand, were

more direct in their praise for Catherine II. Gavrila Romanovich

Derzhavin, famous for his odes, often dedicated his poems to Empress Catherine

II. In contrast to most of his contemporaries, Derzhavin was highly

devoted to his state; he served in the military, before rising to various roles

in Catherine II's government, including secretary to the Empress and Minister of

Justice. Unlike those who took after the grand style of Mikhail Lomonosov and

Alexander Sumarokov, Derzhavin was concerned with the minute details of his

subjects. Denis Fonvizin, an author primarily of

comedy, approached the subject of the Russian nobility with an angle of

critique. Fonvizin felt the nobility should be held to the standards they

were under the reign of Peter the Great, during which the quality of devotion to

the state was rewarded. His works criticized the current system for

rewarding the nobility without holding them responsible for the duties they

once performed. Using satire and comedy, Fonvizin supported a system of nobility

in which the elite were rewarded based upon personal merit rather than the

hierarchal favoritism that was rampant during Catherine the Great's reign.

Golden Age The 19th century is traditionally

referred to as the "Golden Era" of Russian literature. Romanticism

permitted a flowering of especially poetic talent: the names of Vasily

Zhukovsky and later that of his protégé Alexander Pushkin came to the fore.

Pushkin is credited with both crystallizing the literary Russian

language and introducing a new level of artistry to Russian literature. His

best-known work is a novel in verse, Eugene Onegin. An entire new generation

of poets including Mikhail Lermontov, Yevgeny Baratynsky, Konstantin

Batyushkov, Nikolay Nekrasov, Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, Fyodor Tyutchev

and Afanasy Fet followed in Pushkin's steps.

Prose was flourishing as well. The first great Russian novelist was Nikolai

Gogol. Then came Nikolai Leskov, Ivan Turgenev, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin,

all mastering both short stories and novels, and novelist Ivan Goncharov. Leo

Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky soon became internationally renowned to the

point that many scholars such as F. R. Leavis have described one or the other

as the greatest novelist ever. In the second half of the century Anton Chekhov

excelled in writing short stories and became perhaps the leading dramatist

internationally of his period. Other important 19th-century

developments included the fabulist Ivan Krylov; non-fiction writers such as

Vissarion Belinsky and Alexander Herzen; playwrights such as Aleksandr

Griboyedov, Aleksandr Ostrovsky and the satirist Kozma Prutkov.

Nineteenth-century Russian literature perpetuated disparate ideas of suicide;

it became another facet of culture and society in which men and women were

regarded and treated differently. A woman could not commit the noble, heroic

suicide that a man could; she would not be regarded highly or as a martyr, but

as a simple human who, overcome with feelings of love gone unfulfilled and

having no one to protect her from being victimized by society, surrendered

herself. Many of the 19th-century Russian heroines were victims of suicide

as well as victims of the lifestyle of St. Petersburg, which was long argued to

have imported the very idea of and justifications for suicide into Russia.

St. Petersburg, which was built as a Western rather than a Russian city was

long accused by supporters of traditional Russian lifestyles as

importing Western ideas—the ideas of achieving nobility, committing suicide

and, the synthesis of these two ideas, the nobility of suicide being among

them. Novels set in Moscow in particular, such

as Anna Karenina and Bednaia Liza, follow a trend of female suicides which

suggest a weakness in character which exists only because they are women; they

are said by readers to be driven by their emotions into situations from

which suicide seems to be the only escape. These instances of self-murder

have no deeper meaning than that and, in the case of Bednaia Liza, the setting of

Moscow serves only to provide a familiarity which will draw the reader

to it, and away from Western novels. Contrastingly, many novels set in St.

Petersburg viewed suicide primarily through the lens of a male protagonist

as opposed to the females who held the spotlight in the aforementioned titles.

Beyond that, instead of the few females who commit suicide in these Petersburg

texts being propelled to such lengths by a love so powerful and inescapable that

it consumed them, financial hardships and moral degradation which they faced

in the Imperial Capital contaminated or destroyed their femininity; related to

this, prostitution became markedly more prominent in popular literature in the

19th century. Another new aspect of literary suicides

introduced in the Petersburg texts is that authors have shifted their gazes

from individuals and their plot-driving actions to presentations of broad

political ideologies, which are common to Greek and Roman heroes—this step was

taken in order to establish a connection between Russian male protagonists who

take their own lives and Classic tragic heroes, whereas the women of the

literature remained as microcosms for the stereotyped idea of the female

condition. The idea of suicide as a mode of protecting one’s right to

self-sovereignty was seen as legitimate within the sphere of St. Petersburg, a

secular and “Godless…” capital. Unlike Classic tragic heroes, the deaths of

male protagonists, such as in Nikolai Gogol’s Nevskii Prospekt and Dmitry

Grigorovich’s Svistul’kin, did not bring about great celebrations in their honor,

or even faint remembrances amongst their comrades. In fact, both protagonists die

lonely deaths, suffering quietly and alone in their final hours. Until the

Russian revolution in 1917, such themes remained prominent in literature.

Silver Age The beginning of the 20th century ranks

as the Silver Age of Russian poetry. Well-known poets of the period include:

Alexander Blok, Sergei Yesenin, Valery Bryusov, Konstantin Balmont, Mikhail

Kuzmin, Igor Severyanin, Sasha Chorny, Nikolay Gumilyov, Maximilian Voloshin,

Innokenty Annensky, Zinaida Gippius. The poets most often associated with the

"Silver Age" are Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Osip Mandelstam and Boris

Pasternak. While the Silver Age is considered to be

the development of the 19th-century Russian literature tradition, some

avant-garde poets tried to overturn it: Velimir Khlebnikov, David Burliuk,

Aleksei Kruchenykh and Vladimir Mayakovsky.

Though the Silver Age is famous mostly for its poetry, it produced some