Vladimir Kozlov is a writer, screenwriter and documentary filmmaker. He was born in 1972 in Mogilev, Belarus. After graduating from Mogilev University, Kozlov moved to Minsk and then to Moscow. His coming-of-age coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union, which is reflected in his early work. Kozlov is the author of a dozen books of prose and non-fiction, including Gopniki (Hoods), SSSR (USSR), which was shortlisted for the Big Book Prize, and Domoy (TheReturn), which was shortlisted for the National Bestseller Prize. He was nominated for GQ Russia’s Writer of the Year in 2011 and 2012.
Kozlov’s book USSR: Diary of a Perestroika Kid has been translated into English. The story of the teenagers in this book takes place in the year of the Chernobyl disaster. What makes it particularly disturbing is that the vibrant life of the city and the preparations for the Victory Day celebration took place at a moment when the radioactive clouds from Chernobyl were already spreading over Europe.
Translated by Andrea Gregovich
Andrea Gregovich is a writer and translator. She holds an MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her translations have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including “Tin House”, “AGNI Review”, “Hayden’s Ferry Review”, “Guernica”, and the Best European Fiction series. Gregovich’s translation of Mikhail Tarkovsky’s Ice Flow was featured in Best European Fiction-2015 by Dalkey Archive Press.
We didn’t have practice that Wednesday. The coach met us at the bus stop at the Goods for Men store. We went to the grocery store and bought two cakes and two large cans of orange juice from the cafeteria.
The coach lived on the second floor of a building just like ours, in the same two-room apartment, except you had to walk through one room to get to the other. He had sent his wife and child to the neighbor’s. “That way they won’t bother us,” he said.
I sat on a chair by the window, right under the open transom. Children were chirping like birds in the courtyard, climbing all over the parallel bars and spreading last year’s dead grass all over the place.
“Boxing is a really interesting sport because it’s a spectacle,” the trainer said. “The way it goes in sports is the way it goes in life. If a guy is a weightlifter, this is how he goes about weightlifting…” The coach stood up, hunched his shoulders, let his arms hang down, and took two big two steps. “This is what he does in life, this is how he goes to the store, this is how he goes everywhere. A boxer, on the other hand, is always mobile. I would even say graceful. Do you know this word? Do you know what it means?”
A few of the boys nodded. I took a piece of cake from my plate, took a bite and sipped some juice, it was in a white cup with the wolf and rabbit from I’ll Get You! on it..[i]
“I remember once at a competition,” the coach continued. “It was the student championship of the Republic of Belarus. There were a lot of trained boxers who were studying at the various institutes, but there were also guys who were just students. They’d obviously never had any training. There was one guy from the Teachers’ Institute who was competing. He was a fellow from the countryside, big and strong. His weight category was eighty-five kilograms. So anyway, when he got in the ring he didn’t know the stance or anything. His opponent is circling him, jogging in place, getting ready to throw a punch. Then suddenly this collective farmer takes a wide swing, just like in a country brawl, and hits the guy with one punch. It was a knockout. All the spectators were pissing themselves; they were laughing so hard. Although it isn’t always funny. I know a boxer named Vova Kriptovic who killed a guy in the ring once.”
“Did they send him to jail?” asked Litvinenko.
“No, and why would they? He didn’t violate any rules, did everything by the book. His opponent just turned out to have a weak heart. Generally speaking, boxing – and really, this is true of any sport – is always a benefit in life. I’m not talking about the obvious things like getting in a fight to defend a girl’s honor,” the trainer looked at us. “That stuff goes without saying. I’m talking about something else. For example, it made things much easier for me in the army. I graduated from the history department at the teacher’s institute. They didn’t have military classes there so they took me in the army after I already had my diploma. They sent me straight to Pechi, next to Borisov. Have you heard of Pechi? It’s a pretty crappy place to be stationed. The regimen was there and everything else about it. Our wake-up call was at six o’clock in the morning. I had late classes at the university so I was used to waking up around ten. Anyhow, maybe some of you will have this opportunity.”
“Why weren’t you assigned to the sports unit?” asked Kostin, a short guy from the Mir-2 neighborhood.
“I have no idea how you get assigned to that one,” the trainer picked up his glass and sipped his juice. “But ultimately my situation wasn’t any worse. They recognized what a good boxer I was when I was still at college. Right away the commander told me: let’s have you focused on training. Well, I trained, won first place in the unit, then first place in the division. At regionals I got second just as easily. Then that was it – from then until I was discharged I never once held a gun in my hand or marched in formation. Just training and competitions. They let me go home a lot too. The only orders the commander ever gave me were, buy me this in Mogilev, buy me that. But I didn’t waste my time looking all over for it – I just bought whatever shit I could find in GUM.”
“Did you hear about that girl who went to America?” asked Kostin. “Like, she wrote a letter to Reagan or something. A kid from America came here and then this one went over there.”
“I don’t care if her name was Lycheva or Gorbacheva, I would totally go to America,” he said.
“America probably wouldn’t turn anybody away,” said the trainer. “America is America.” *
There was half an hour left before training. The gym was still closed, the cloakroom too.
“Let’s go inside the institute,” suggested Kuzmenok.
We walked up to the second floor, went in the first door and stood on the balcony overlooking the gym. It was more than twice the size of the one where we had training. There was a real football goal with a net in it under the basketball hoop.
There were students running in the gym for their P. E. class. “I figure they must separate babes and guys for P. E. here,” said Kuzmenok.
“Yeah, I know. Natashka told me. Her class is separated too,” I said.
P.E. was taught by a tall bald guy. The students were all wearing shorts and t-shirts in different colors and fashions. Their breasts were bouncing around under their t-shirts as they ran.
“That one’s hot, do you see her?” Kuzmenok pointed at one with a big chest and butt. “Would you screw her?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Would you?”
“Me too. Who else?”
“That one,” I pointed. “And that one. And probably that one.”
The PE teacher told the girls to stop. The students turned their backs to us and began stretching. I could see the outline of their panties under their shorts.
“Now we will work on sparring,” said the trainer. “You, Kuzmenok, you’ll spar with Frolov.”
“Get ready to see a knockout,” Kuzmenok whispered to me. “I’m gonna smack him around like a little puppy.”
Frolov was short and compact, almost fat. I didn’t know what neighborhood he came from. He was almost always quiet. He came to practice alone and left alone. alone, almost always, since the first time we went to practice. He wasn’t there on Volkov’s birthday.
Kuzmenok and Frolov punched each other with their gloves, went to their corners, then touched gloves again. Kuzmenok threw a right uppercut. Frolov dodged it, threw a hook to Kuzmenok’s jaw, a cross to his stomach, and gave him a series of jabs. Kuzmenok ran back to his corner, danced in place, ran at Frolov again, faked right, jabbed left, then left again. Frolov deflected the blow and crossed to his gut. Kuzmenok gasped and stopped. Frolov punched him full force in the jaw. Kuzmenok crashed down to the oil cloth floor of the ring.
“Knockout!” yelled the guys.
Frolov crawled out of the ring. Somebody patted him on the back. Frolov didn’t smile. He wiped sweat from his brow with his glove, which tore open a pimple and spread a little drop of blood. Kuzmenok got up and crawled out of the ring on the other side.
“I guess he totally overpowered him,” the trainer looked at Frolov, then at Kuzmenok. “I didn’t intend for this to happen. I thought this bout would be an example of equally matched strength. Alright, let’s have the next pair get up there…”
Kuzmenok and I went to the bus stop. He was still all red. One of his cheeks was swollen. “He got off easy,” Kuzmenok said. “That moron trainer had no right to say our match was over. I would have ended him.”
“He beat you,” I said.
“What? He did not kick my ass; did you get that? He just got off easy. And what, do you think you kicked Skvortsov’s ass?”
“I never said I did. It was a tie.”
“Ours was a draw, too.”
“Oh right, a draw,” I said.
“Okay, so what if he kicked my ass,” he said. “But don’t blab about this at school, alright?”
Mama and Papa were sitting in the kitchen eating sausage patties. Natasha wasn’t home.
“Has training been over long?” asked Mama.
“Forty minutes ago. I’ve been on my way home since then.”
“It’s best that you come straight home. Rather than what you do, goofing around out there all evening. The result of that business is evident in your grade book. All 3’s and a zero for conduct for the week. I can’t fathom why he signed up for boxing,” she said to Papa.
“Boxing is a good idea,” said Papa. “A fellow must learn to stand up for himself. I support him on this one.”
“It’s fine so long as it doesn’t interrupt his studies. Only a few months left until the end of the year, and you have so many 3’s to fix.”
“I’ll fix them,” I said. “You don’t need to worry about that.”
“We’re not worried about anything. You’re the one who should be worried, that you’ll end up with 3’s this year.”
“I could care less.”
“Seriously? What would make you say that?” Mama said. “You could care less about your progress report?”
“Progress reports don’t mean anything. Natasha only got three 4’s and the rest 5’s, didn’t she? And then at the institute she got all 3’s.”
“This conversation isn’t about her, it’s about you.”
“Quiet, listen to what they’re saying!” Papa got up and turned up the radio.
“…an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station,” said the announcer. “There were two deaths as a result of the explosion at the second reactor, as well as a few isolated occurrences of background radiation.”
*
The school’s parade formation walked down Peace Avenue, past the school supply store, the Sausages store and the Enlightenment bookstore, crossed at the end of First of May Street and came out on Lenin Square. The portraits hung from the sixth floor of the House of Soviets: Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Engels’ head was very small and Lenin’s was very big. On the side with the portraits, starting on the second-to-last floor, there was red material draped from the windows. Below it, on the Lenin Square side, there were even more portraits. The first one on the right was Gorbachev, the rest I didn’t know.
Once Papa took me with him to a parade when I was little, but we didn’t stand with the formation from his factory, just walked. One time we saw the GUM women’s brass band walking on First of May Street, all of them in yellow hats with black stripes, white shirts, blue skirts and yellow high-heeled boots. Their hairstyles were the only things different about them: some had ponytails, some were just long, and a few had theirs cut short.
Dolgobrodov said to Timur: “I called my sister in Dniepropetrovsk – she said there’s already a panic there because of the emergency at the power station. Supposedly it wasn’t just two men who died but several dozen and there’s serious nuclear contamination…”[iii]
“I was listening to Voice of America – on there they said the radioactive cloud is moving across Europe, meaning we might already be covered in it…”
“What does that mean?”
“That means that we really shouldn’t have gone outside today for the parade, especially with the school children. But everything’s always like this. We have serious conversations only about perestroika and democracy…”
“Alright, alright, you don’t need to yell about it. Especially around the pupils.”
“You think they don’t understand anything? They’re grown up enough to get it already.”
I woke up…It was cloudy out the window. It had probably rained during the night. The rails on the balcony were wet. Drops were hanging from the antenna wires. Far away, behind the houses, a train was going past. The radio was playing in the kitchen:
Today is Victory Day
The scent of gunpowder
Permeates this holiday
With gray hair in our whiskers
We will find joy
With tears in our eyes
Victory Day!
Victory Day!
Victory Day!
[i]I’ll Get You! was a classic Soviet cartoon in which a villainous wolf was forever trying to capture the protagonist rabbit.
[ii] Katya Lycheva was a Soviet schoolgirl who was invited to visit the USA in 1986 in response to an earlier visit to the Soviet Union by American schoolgirl Samantha Smith in 1983. Lycheva’s visit was highly-publicized in the Soviet media and she was for a short time a celebrity.
[iii] Dniepropetrovsk is a major city in eastern Ukraine downstream from Chernobyl on the Dnieper River.
Kukulin is often called one of Russia’s best literary critics, but he is also a poet and scholar. He graduated from Moscow State University with a degree in psychology and received his Ph.D. in literary theory from the Russian State University for the Humanities, writing his thesis on the work of Daniil Kharms. He is the editor of the online literary journal TextOnly and the book series New Poetry. In 2015, he was awarded the Andrey Bely Prize in a nomination “Scholarship in the Humanities” for his book The Machines of Noisy Time: How Soviet Montage Became the Method of Unofficial Culture (Moscow: 2015). Until early April 2016, he was a visiting professor of Russian language and literature at Washington and Lee University and graciously agreed to be interviewed for Contemporary Russian Literature at UVA. Our conversation took place in the charming Lexington Coffee House on the Washington and Lee campus. I spoke with Kukulin about the place of Russian literature in world culture and the moral responsibility of contemporary Russian writers and critics to transcend the legacy of Soviet literature and return to the humanism of the classics.
About Elena Dimov
Elena Dimov is a regular contributor to this site and the translator of Maria Rybakova’s novel-in-verse Gnedich. Elena was born in Vladivostok and grew up in the Russian Far East. She holds a master’s degree in Oriental Studies and Chinese Language from the Far Eastern Federal University and a Ph.D. in Russian History from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. She has lived in Hamburg, Germany and Sofia, Bulgaria. For many years she was a researcher at the Institute for Contemporary Social Theories in Sofia. She currently resides in Charlottesville, Virginia. She has taught a course in Russian language and culture at UVA.
“If literature has a social function, it is, perhaps, to show man his optimal parameters, his spiritual maximum. On that score, the metaphysical man of Dostoyevsky’s novels is of greater value than (Mr. Kundera’s) wounded rationalist, however modern and however common.”
– Joseph Brodsky The New York Times, Feb.17th, 1985
Elena Dimov: Ilya, let’s start with a traditional question: please tell us a little bit about yourself.
Ilya Kukulin: I was born in 1969, and at the moment I am an Associate Professor at Moscow Research University of Economics, in its School of Cultural Studies. This University’s design is reminiscent of a Western style, more precisely, of an American college of liberal arts, but with fewer opportunities for choosing a specialization. During this year, I’ve also worked as a Visiting Professor at Washington and Lee University. Besides that, I work in Moscow as a senior researcher at the School of Humanitarian Studies of the Academy of National Economics and Public Administration. Using an English idiom, I wear many hats: I am simultaneously a literary critic, cultural historian, and social historian, and here I have been teaching Russian language and literature. In Moscow, I also teach modern Russian literature and cultural studies.
ED: What is your opinion on the mission of literature?
IK: I do not think that literature has some incredible special mission. But like any art, its function is to make the world richer and promote the transformation of human consciousness so that we can have more opportunities to experience the world, to perceive and understand each other, and become a little bit different, maybe a little bit better than we are. At the same time, we should not forget that literature is both entertainment and a way of understanding the world, all in one. Besides this, the mission of literature as an art is to bring joy to the world and, similar to catharsis, transform the sadness of which there is so much in the world.
In the modern period, the concept of catharsis becomes suspended because we see increasingly more suffering and discomfort all around us, which we definitely know cannot be solved in the near future. In this situation, the task becomes to help people cope with this disastrous experience, to not let people succumb to the temptation of considering this world unfair and terrible. This is also because there are some people, a lot of people, who promised to move us toward a better future and social order but turned out to lead people to different nightmares. That is too familiar to the citizens of the former Soviet Union, which I am as well. Literature helps us to live through the painful experience at the present time and to make this experience meaningful and endurable — rather than postpone it for the future, about which we know nothing.
ED: Could you explain in more detail what the task of the literary critic is, as someone who undertakes the study of literature and the explanation of literature, the understanding of literature? After all, the critique has certain functions, doesn’t it?
IK: Regarding the task of literary criticism, it seems to me that there the most important thing is the definition of the word itself, according to Kantian’s interpretation of «critique». Criticism is usually associated in our minds with “criticizing” something. But in fact, the Kantian understanding of critique as a method for explanation of the world defines the function of literary criticism as a whole. The word “critique” does not mean disapproval or negative judgment, but analysis and making the matter comprehensible and clear. Being comprehended in this sense, literary criticism has its social and ethical aims. Of course, you remember Alexander Pushkin’s words that poet has to be judged by the law, which he (or she) established for him- or herself.
ED: Ilya, I understand that this is a very broad topic, but can you briefly describe the main trends of modern Russian literature in your understanding? What is happening now in Russian literature?
IK: First of all, let’s define the way in which we can speak about contemporary Russian literature. It is important for me that this literature, since its inception, has been and remains European literature. Similar to this, American literature is European in its spirit, though it sounds paradoxical. It means that these literatures belong to the same circle of cultures that are called Western culture. In this sense, Russian literature is part of the same context as French, German or British contemporary literatures. Only in this context we can consider it – it is not exotic but has the same trends that are important now for modern Western culture in general.
ED: This is obvious for classic literature, but does it relate to modern Russian literature which, figuratively speaking, seethes? It is all agitated and unsettled.
IK: The contemporary look always discerns the seething, and then what remains – or, to be more precise, what we ourselves cause to remain — becomes a classic. Innovative Russian literature seems to me to be a field of intense struggle, and though this struggle is invisible and often goes without controversy, there are multiple diverse flows, which can be schematically reduced to two or three.
In the first one, the writers reproduce mutatis mutandis some trends that existed in Soviet literature. The Soviet literature was exotic: it was arranged unlike European literature because it was a large-scale system of social and psychological programming. British researcher Evgeny Dobrenko has written some important books about this feature.
The second aspect of the Soviet literature was the creation of the system, if you will like, of alternative social programs. This is what we can call non-official literature, i.e. the literature that emerged in the Soviet era, was published and went through censorship with some difficulties. This kind of literature offered less support to the officially approved social programs of human transformation and their mobilization but more to the questions of humanism and individualization, the possibility of ethical action and compassion to the private person.
Soviet literature was not uniform, but the idea about literature as an intermediary for ideological and social programs was very important for Soviet literature and was shared both by those who were at the helm of governance in Soviet literature and those who tried to resist. Besides, Soviet literature was based on the idea of progress; this idea was probably gone from modern Russian literature, including the heirs of Soviet literature who left this idea a long time ago.
The second trend was connected to the so-called uncensored literature. They were not the authors who wrote something forbidden, but mostly they did not aim their work at passing through Soviet censorship. This meant that they turned on the self-censorship – not automatically, but in case of uncensored literature it was much more probable. It was a literature more diverse and more European in style that allowed itself to be more problematic. Its authors questioned the unity of self, or meaningfulness of language – especially of the Soviet ideological language… It included many elements that could be found in Western counterculture of the 60s, including American literature and poetry. It happened not because these Russian authors specifically imitated somebody, but most likely because after they left the Soviet paradigm of social programming, they had to reconsider critically the main elements of Russian and especially Soviet cultural canon.
It’s exactly from this kind of uncensored literature that authors appeared who worked out their own vision of the literature’s place in the modern world, not as an ideology’s intermediary, but as a standalone system, which generated a new language of human interaction with the world, a new language of human emotions and so on.
ED: Don’t you think that the importance of the mass (popular) literature is considerable, that the mass literature helps people in their daily existence?
IK: No. I mean that the uncensored literature rather questioned the basic concepts of human existence and not only the Soviet, but also the new European in general, had done the same as the 20th century European avant-garde by presenting such questions: What is society? What is culture? What is language? In Soviet literature, the language had minimal reflection but in uncensored literature it was high.
Mass literature is another important trend that exists in modern Russian literature. In Soviet literature, popular culture was not separated into a special segment but pretended to be something unified with the rest of literary field. For example, the considerable part of detective genre in the USSR was presented as some kind of production novels. Now there is a lot of detective literature, women’s prose. Sometimes these works are quite curious, but the most part of this literature stratum is focused on pure entertainment.
Nevertheless, the most recent large-scale experiment in popular literature was at the beginning of the 2000s. There were the works by Boris Akunin (Chkhartishvili), who continued the tradition of the intellectual detective, say, in the tradition of G.K. Chesterton and, at the same time, of Umberto Eco. His novels were aesthetically postmodernist, but they were riveting – especially his early novels — and easy comprehensible.
There are also noticeable the ideas of imperialism in Russian fiction especially science fiction…
ED: Don’t you think that the emergence of the idea of imperialism was logical because the traditional triad (God, Tsar and Nationality) holding the Russian empire (the doctrine: pravoslaviye – samoderzhaviye – narodnost’- E.D.) disappeared? Only one element is left of this triad – nationality.
IK: You know, I think that all of this is much more complicated. I agree with you on the major point that the idea of imperialism emerged logically, although it first appeared much earlier. According to our wonderful cultural historian Andrei Zorin, a professor at Oxford University, who particularly analyzed the origin of the so-called Triad “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality,” the concept of narodnost (“Nationality”) was defined by both the Orthodoxy and autocracy. It meant that the Russian man back in 1833 was defined as one who believed in God and was loyal to the Tsar. And those who believed neither in God nor in the tsar were presumably not considered to be Russians. The process of nation-building, which was going on at the time in various European countries, was captured in Russia by officials, in particular the imperial statesman and “political technologist” Count Sergei Uvarov (1785-1855) and worked to build the empire. Since then, all attempts of independent, society-rooted nation-building in Russia were overturned and blocked. This led to the situation that at every next phase, the imperialist elements acting under the nationalist slogans, became more powerful, and to hateful xenophobia. And now we see the next stage of this process, when, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, social reflection on the roots of this process was forcibly blocked though after the collapse of the British and French empires, their processes of reflection went on quite turbulently.
In Russia, only a few were thinking about this, and these reflections were considered extremely uncomfortable. It was more affordable in the 1990s, because in spite of a difficult situation in the country, the people had much more faith in the future. The condition of triumphant cynicism in Russia these days is more reminiscent of the Soviet Union in the 70s than the 90s, when some people tried to transform their lives, to become more religious or westernized, etc.
ED: I wonder if the rise of postmodernism in Russian literature was a reflection of this nihilism?
IK: Not in the least.
ED: Would you please describe what Russian postmodernism is, very briefly?
IK: There is a fairly widespread illusion among critics and journalists that postmodernism emerged in Russia in the 90s. This is not true. Postmodernist literature appeared in Russia in the 1960s but it remained underground. This concerns literature, but also fine art and other kinds of art. In the 90s all of this was published and therefore gave the impression that postmodernism in Russia emerged at that point in time.
ED: The popular assertion among UVA professors of Russian literature exists that Russian postmodernism is associated mostly with authors such as Pelevin, Ulitskaia etc. How are things in reality?
IK: No, the first Russian postmodernist literary works were Venedikt Erofeev’s Moscow-Petushki and Pushkinskii Dom by Andrei Bitov at the end of the 60s; the roots of Russian postmodernism could be traced back to the works of Daniil Kharms (1905–1942), or to the poems of his friend Alexander Vvedensky (1904–1941), or to radical experimental prose written by Pavel Ulitin (1918–1986) in the 50s, 60s and 70s. His works could be compared, say, with the novels of William S. Burroughs.
Pelevin is a postmodernist, but he is more the heir of the New Age, the spiritual and cultural movement which existed in America during the 1960s. Pelevin mostly draws on the postmodernist methods for his own benefit. Postmodernism assumes that a person is not able to reach the ultimate truth. On the contrary, Pelevin is constantly preaching his interpretation of Buddhism is the final truth. Pelevin is a good writer, but it would be strange to regard him as the foremost representative of Russian postmodernism.
I also think that when speaking about postmodernism, we underestimate poetry, starting with such poets as Viktor Krivulin, Vsevolod Nekrasov, Dmitry Prigov, Mikhail Ayzenberg, Yevgeny Saburov, and ending with contemporary young poets.
From the other side, Yury Davydov (1924—2001), the author of the outstanding historical and surrealist novelBestseller (2000), was also a postmodernist author, and it would be inaccurate to conceptualize Russian postmodernism only by Pelevin’s works or, for example, by Ulitskaia, who is also a good writer. Speaking about the younger artists, we should remember also Denis Osokin who lives in Kazan, and Valery Votrin, who lives in the UK, and many other authors. Denis Osokin’s novel Ovsianki (The Yellow-Hammers) became a basis for Osokin’s script to Alexey Fedorchenko’s film Silent Souls, highly acclaimed by the USA critics. Also the novels by Valery Votrin, Poslednii magog (The Last Magog) and Logoped (Speech Therapist). This literature might provoke discussion, but, to my opinion, these works are socially and aesthetically important.
As a matter of fact, postmodernism is an extremely important movement by modern standards. At its origins are such works as the short story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Borges (1947) and the novel Gravity’s Rainbow by American writer Thomas Pynchon (1973). Postmodernism as a cultural movement emerged in the 40s-50s of the 20th century in literature and then blossomed. It raised two very important questions. The first: how can the individual distinguish between the real and the virtual? It is a timely question now; it becomes more urgent at this time when we more and more live in the world of virtual reality. The second: to what extent is an individual able to distinguish between their own and alien perceptions within his or her inner self?
Modernism was a program of the adaptation of all alien elements and turning them into its own. According to modernism, any person could understand exotic or archaic cultures and make them their own, or to surpass themselves so that they could accept it as their own culture. But postmodernism suggests that a person can discover within his or her soul many alien images and ideologies that were not his/her own creation and cannot distinguish between one’s own and the alien. With every day, while we are reading social media and absorbing alien texts, we so often cannot differentiate between our own and other people’s perceptions, so the analytical work of the postmodern art becomes more and more important. It helps us to realize the fact that it’s impossible to make a complete distinction between the self and alien perceptions within our souls, but also that this analytical work should never stop, like everyday ethical reflection.
ED: Did the rise of Russian classical novels happen in the modern time?
IK: What do you have in mind?
ED: For example, Zakhar Prilepin’s works.
IK: I do not consider Zakhar Prilepin as the successor of the traditions of classical literature.
ED: How do you relate to the assertion that “Zakhar Prilepin is our modern day Leo Tolstoy?”
IK: Negatively.
ED: Why is he considered one of the most important contemporary authors?
IK: By whom?
ED: I have read this idea in some critical press.
IK: Prilepin, in my understanding, is one of the brightest representatives of the revival of Soviet literature’s stereotypes at the current stage. Take his latest novel, the most sensational novel The Abode (Obitel’). This work starts with the assertion in the preface that “Truth is what is remembered.” For him, moral nihilism is more characteristic than for postmodernists, which are usually considered nihilists. This novel is built on the thesis that the main positive characters declared that Russia is more important than any individual subject, and the individual’s achievements matter only if they are important for Russia. In my opinion, this allows for the manipulation of individuals. According to this novel, human life has aesthetic meaning, but not ethical. In my opinion, it is breaking with the traditions of Russian literature of the 19th century, if we will interpret them, say, due to the essays of the great philosopher Isaiah Berlin. In Prilepin’s novels, moral reflections are devaluated. Prilepin’s methods of reestablishing ideology in literature was analyzed in Mark Lipovetsky’s recent article “Political Motility of Zakhar Prilepin”. Now, I see not the rebirth of the Russian classical novel, but rather the imitation of this renaissance.
ED: So in your opinion, there is no present comeback of the Russian classical novel?
IK: This question is constructed incorrectly. For example, could we say that there is the return of the traditional American novel?
ED: I agree, literature is a vibrant phenomenon evolving in accordance with its own laws, but do the elements of classical psychological literature exist in the works of contemporary Russian writers?
IK: They certainly do, but there is one delicate point. We are accustomed to the fact that the classical psychology is present in thick novels. I believe that today, the most intense psychology has moved to other formats. Current poetry and short prosaic works are more psychologically sophisticated than huge novels, comparable by their volume to Dostoevsky or Tolstoy’s works. And among such lengthy novels, which are published nowadays, the most successful works mostly enter into dialogue with modern Western authors but not with the literature of the 19th century.
ED: Could you point out some notable novels of the 2000s?
IK: In my opinion, the turning point during the last decade is the appearance of remarkable novels such as Bestsellerby Yury Davydov (Бестселлер, 2001); Mikhail Shishkin’s Maidenhair (Venerin Volos) and A Letter Book (Pismovnik), and novels by Vladimir Sorokin. His Ice Trilogy (Tr. by Jamey Gambrell, N.Y.: 2011) is not close to me, but I like his novel Telluriyya (Telluryia, M.: 2013) very much and I especially like his short stories. There has appeared a very bright trilogy by Oleg Yuriev who lives in Germany, which consists of the novels: Poluostrov Zhidyatin (The Zhidyatin Peninsula), followed by Novy Golem ili Voina starikov i detei (New Golem, or, The War of the Old Folk with the Children) and the final part Vineta, published in 2008.
There is a novel by Leonid Kostyukov Velikaia strana, (М.: ОГИ, 2009), the funniest work ever written about America by a Russian author; unfortunately it’s almost untranslatable, because its language plays with the differences between English and Russian languages. I would also add the prose by Maria Boteva, who pictures the Russian little town in a tragic and mastery fashion and with poetically innovative style.
Among non-fiction, the most prominent include works by Belarusian author Svetlana Alexievich, who writes in Russian and who has received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015. But there are also Russian women authors who are her successors: Elena Kostyuchenko and Elena Racheva. Elena Kostyuchenko’s book of journalist prose, Uslovno nenuzhnye, was published two years ago and became an important literary event. This is non-fiction of outstanding style, picturing the life of paupers, of unemployed people, of criminal teenagers, of young drug addicts… Racheva has published a book of interviews of old survivors of GULAG camps, they told about their experience of unfair court and everyday struggle for their dignity.
Speaking about the works written by Russian-language authors during the 2000s, we should remember that Russian-language literature exists outside of Russia’s boundaries. We should keep in mind the Russian literature of Israel. Israeli-Russian writer Alexander Goldstein, who died recently, was one such exceptional author. His latest novel, which came out not long before his death,Spokoinye polia(The Quiet Fields) was an outstanding work, but it was left unnoticed in Russia.
ED: Don’t you think that the literary critics are responsible to some extent for these outstanding authors who were undeservedly forgotten in Russia, and the literary critic’s task is to pull them out of oblivion and to convey their works to the public?
IK: Certainly. But let’s return to where we started our conversation: modern Russian society is now a state of collective affect. It is the society, which was muddled by TV propaganda, but also people fooled themselves because they wanted it and were frightened by changing post-Soviet circumstances. They cannot accept discomforting information; therefore, these novels, which tell something more complicated than it seems, and also the critical articles which describe these novels, are not perceived by the Russian audience. Literary critics are responsible, but Russian society is responsible too, because many colleagues and I have written convincing words about novels which are coming out, but these articles have sometimes not been read. Though we cannot say that all these literary works have sunk into the void because there are still people who are reading them.
ED: Regarding Russian literary prizes, what is the function of the Russian Booker Prize?
IK: Do you know by any chance who the latest Russian Booker winner was?
ED: I don’t remember for 2015, but I’ll check (Alexander Snegirev with Vera – ED). The Booker of the Decade was Lozhitsia mgla na starye stupeni (A Gloom is Cast Upon the Ancient Steps) by Alexander Chudakov (2011), a very good book. What criteria are used to choose the book for the prize?
IK: Chudakov’s novel undoubtedly is the great book. But there are some problems with literary prizes in Russia at the present moment. I am very glad that recently there have appeared new literary prizes such as the “Razlichie” (Distinction) Prize, which is given by young critics to the aesthetically radical poets. There aren’t many of them, and the awarded amount of money is usually rather symbolic, but the mere fact of awarding these prizes demonstrates a renewal of the understanding of literature.Regarding the Russian Booker, it is a sad story; in 2009, I published an article in Russian on the evolution of the Russian literary prizes, here you could read it in detail. When the Booker was founded in 1992, the committee tried to award it to people who had been deprived of attention during the Soviet era. It was, figuratively speaking, the State Prize for loyal, but nonconformist intellectuals. The first Booker winner, Mark Kharitonov, wrote truly an exceptional novel, Dva Ivana, depicting the fate of an elephant and its young attendant Ivan in Russia in the epoch of Ivan the Terrible. However, Kharitonov received the Booker not for this work, but for his second book, Lines of Fate. The Booker Prize, however, did not stimulate reading of this book. Then the prize was awarded to Vladimir Makanin for Blaize-Covered Table with Decanter in 1993. Makanin and the consequent winners of Booker prize were all very worthy authors, but it often felt like payback for them being disadvantaged during the Soviet time. Not always, but often. Some Russian Booker winners were not sufficiently understood by critics and underestimated by readers – I mean Andrei Sergeev with his novel Postal Stamp Album, analyzing the child’s experience of the late Stalininst and early “Thaw” years, the late 1940s and the 50s, and Alexander Morozov with his novel The Others’ Letters written in 1968 and published only in 1997. After giving prizes to Ulitskaia and Shishkin (in 2000 and 2001 correspondingly), they began to acknowledge young writers, sometimes very good authors like Alexander Ilichevsky.
However, it would become obvious that the prize was given because it was safe variant but not the representative of some acute problematic literary movement. In general, it became like a kind of Soviet approach, similar to presumptiveness of the Soviet times: “the West has Beatniks but we have our own poet Andrei Voznesensky who is like the Beatniks but ideologically safe.” The issue was not with Voznesensky, but with the fact that the excellent writer Alexander Ilichevsky was put by the Russian Booker award into Voznesensky’s position of the permitted Beatnik. We can describe this process further, but it has been a sad situation. In my view, the Russian Booker Prize has currently lost its significance, and there is no need to discuss it in detail. Far more important was the awarding of the Nobel Prize in 2015 to Svetlana Alexievich. I consider this a jubilant, very important, and fundamental event.
ED: Without a doubt it was the most important literary event of 2015. But there were some negative responses in the Russian press because of a lot of negativity in her books.
IK: For a significant part of post-Soviet educated community, not for all, but for a significant part, it’s hard to look at itself in the mirror. Alexievich’s books are a frightening but well-reflecting mirror for the post-Soviet men and women.
ED: Was it right for Alexievich, as an outsider, to exalt the negative Russian experience in her books?
IK: Alexievich was not an “outsider” but lived within the Soviet Union. She explains that by origin, she’s connected with the three East Slavic countries – Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine.
ED: One of the most important questions is whether what Alexievich did was innovative for Russian-language literature?
IK: Yes, I think so. Svetlana Alexievich paved the way for a new Russian literature.
ED:Would you please explain in what sense are her works not documentaries?
IK: During the 20th century, Soviet society accumulated enormous, catastrophic psychological experience, which, as she emphasized many times, including in her Nobel lecture, could not be processed and represented by traditional literary methods. This kind of experience is best transferred by poetry or by montage prose similar to Alexievich’s.
ED: I agree. I received many personal letters describing the terrible experience of the daily struggle in Russia at the end of the 20th century.
IK: Alexievich did not merely collect these monologues, she edited them, but most importantly, she created a new literary art form for them, reproduced them into a new literary form. She started as a Soviet journalist but then invented a new literary form for her books and this took her out of the limits of the Soviet journalism to the new literature of the 21st century. She lent these monologues a poetic form.
ED: Regarding contemporary Russian poetry, do you agree with the Manifesto of Feodor Svarovsky about the crisis of the individual “I” and the lyric genre in general?
IK: I love Svarovsky, but I don’t agree with Svarovky’s Manifesto. I have argued with his Manifesto in an article. In my view, the crisis of the lyric genre has existed for a long time and it is a productive phenomenon because it allows us to identify the “I’ of the modern man. Before the beginning of the 20th century, a man confidently said “I am myself”, “I understand myself.” Then came Freud, Jung, and other psychologists, and Michel Foucalt, and everything changed.
ED: Who is in your opinion the brightest representative of the “lyrical movement” in contemporary Russian poetry – could it be Dmitry Vodennikov?
IK: In my opinion, Dmitry Vodennikov is a very talented poet. He is someone who maximally boosts his self-expression. But he understands and shows this self-expression as a tragicomic performance, as an enacting of the replica of a romantic “I,” which is sometimes traceable to other poets. In this sense, of course his poetry is very interesting, but it does not return to the traditional romantic “I” but only imitates such a return in the postmodern situation.
ED: Is it possible to point out “the most important writer” of modern Russian literature? This is a question from students.
IK: When we are speaking about American literature, for example, in America there has never been such a thing as “the most important writer.” You can study many different classical writers in different high schools across America, and, in my opinion, it is a very good situation, despite the fact that it forces university teachers to solve the difficult problem of how to integrate these different types of reader experience. But, nevertheless, this situation is potentially fruitful. The existing Russian tradition of choosing “the main writer” is rather dangerous. It was invented by the critic Belinsky in the 19th century for political purposes, for focusing attention on the socially subversive writers. On one hand, he did the right thing, because he participated in the process of transformation of Russian literature into the instrument of defense of human dignity and social reflection, but on the other hand, through his idea of “the main writer,” he created false benchmarks for Russian literature for many decades ahead. The idea of “the main writer” was covertly connected with an idea of an “ideological correctness.” It seems to me that now, fortunately, there is no main novelist, nor main poet, nor playwright.
I can mention the poets I like, but it does not mean that they are “the main poets.” If we talk about the older generation, it is Mikhail Eremin. Mikhail Ayzenberg – his poems were beautifully translated into English by the wonderful poet James Kates; George Dashevsky who sadly to say recently died; Stanislav Lvovsky; Elena Fanailova; Maria Stepanova; and Linor Goralik, author of poetry and short prose and brilliant comics in Russian. I really like poetry by Polina Barskova, poet and writer; Eugenia Lavut; as well as Olga Zondberg, the author of ultra short prose in one or two sentences. Finally, I would like to mention two very important poets of St. Petersburg origin: Sergey Zavyalov and Alexander Skidan.
A lot of very talented young poets, among them the recently debuted Lada Chizhova, Eugenia Suslova, Nikita Sungatov, and Nikita Safonov — they all are very young people who are now in their 20s.
Regarding prose, I already listed many authors.
ED: What are in your opinion the most interesting novels of the past few years?
IK: In Russian literature, as well as in French, for example, every time we ask about the most interesting works, it would be more fruitful to talk about those novels whose authors experiment with language, question the author’s figure or the habitual types of narration.
In this connection, I would like to draw your attention to new works by Alexander Ilyanen, the St. Petersburg writer. Ilyanen is a Finnish surname; he is Finnish by birth. His latest novel The Pension has been much discussed. It’s diary prose in the tradition of Mikhail Kuzmin, of the Kuzmin era, absolutely ephemeral, weightless and very delicately made. It is prose as though about nothing, about the everyday life of a man who lives his rather quiet, withdrawn life. But it recreates the fabric of human existence.
Dmitry Danilov, a popular writer, implements the same task, but in milder, non-sophisticated form; he received various prizes and his works were translated in English.
There are also authors who write more simplified prose, but at the same time experiment with language. When we are talking about the 2010s, this is very important to me in the example of author Vladimir Sharov. I do not completely agree with his previous novel Be Like Children, but his latest novel, The Return to Egypt, which received the Russian Booker Prize in 2014, is extremely interesting, a wonderful thing, and deserves a lot of attention.
I would like to point out the St. Petersburg author Boris Dyshlenko, who sadly to say, died at the end of last year. He was completely unnoticed during his lifetime, but his latest novel Lyudmila, published in 2015 (Lyudmila. A Detective Long Poem. St. Petersburg: 2015), is excellent, in my opinion. An excerpt was published online by the literary journal Zvezda.
There are several other works, which should be mentioned — there is a novel by Igor Vishnevetsky called Leningrad, about the Leningrad Siege of 1941—1944. It is a significant work that requires thinking, analysis and discussion. Fortunately, Polina Barskova, who studied the history of the Leningrad blockade, wrote an excellent review of this novel. And she herself wrote very important fiction book about the Siege, The Living Pictures.
Modern Russian literature is very rich. There are authors whose “greatness” is overblown by critics, such as Prilepin, but there are also some writers who are paving new paths for the development of Russian literature. In general, I would like to conclude our meeting by saying that Russian literature is in much better condition than Russian society.
In the explosive, unpredictable world of contemporary Russian literature at the beginning of the 21st century, there appeared a phenomenon of non-commercial literature that became more visible and more attractive to readers then the traditional readings of the 90s – commercial prose. Modern Russian writers are diverse and incredibly talented, and they did the almost impossible: they restored the Russian public’s trust in the written word after decades of government-ruled literature. It started with the appearance of the post-modernist works of the 90s. John Narins observed in his recent essay in “The American Reader” that “the first and perhaps key act of resistance was an attempt to restore the power and authority that had long been attached to literature in the Russian tradition, to re-establish reverence for the Writer as Sage, the Writer as Teacher and for literature as access to Truth.” He noted that this was accomplished to an extent.
The post-modernist works at the end of the 20th century were one of the outlets of the negative feelings of the society in crisis and explain the withdrawal into the theatre of the absurd and dark irony. Victor Pelevin, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, Vladimir Sorokin were on the front lines of the new literary wave at the beginning of the new millennium and their contribution to the renaissance of Russian literature is essential. Pelevin’s Chapaev I pustota is one of the best books of our times, as well as works of Petrushevskaya and Sorokin.
During the last decade, however, the Russian literary process, under the influence of a shift in the socio-cultural and psychological demands of society, entered a new stage. The period of “Post-Soviet mourning” concluded with the 2007 appearance of the Librarian (Bibliotekar) by Mikhail Elizarov – a bright and tragic concept of the “lost post-Soviet generation” in Russian society. The “alternative literature” of Pelevin, Petrushevskaya and others gradually made its way to a return to more traditional literature, to a reflection on the historical and humanistic aspects of the present day, to an everyday reality, as well as to a calmer discussion of the painful past and future direction of Russia.
Contemporary Russian literature, as anything else, indicates the shift in public literary tastes and as a mirror reflects the change in the perception of its future and the need for positive new ideas, or maybe, a return to traditional values. The tradition of expectation from the writers of the words of truth which originated in the time of Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy is still alive, and many Russians are looking for answers in literature.
Recently, the tremendous and unexpected success of the book of storiesEveryday Saints and Other Stories by Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov), which has been the number one bestseller in Russia for nearly a year and won the prestigious Big Book Award for most popular book in 2012, confirms this shift in public expectations.
The author himself explained his success in this way: “In this book I want to tell you about this beautiful new world of mine, where we live by laws completely different from those in “normal” worldly life – a world of light and love, full of wondrous discoveries, hope, happiness, trials and triumphs.”
This also explains the phenomenal influence of writer and public intellectual Dmitrii Bykov on the emergence of interest in an affirmative explanation of Soviet history and the success of his Ostromov, set in revolutionary St. Petersburg.
The world of Russian literature today is immense; it offers to the reader a variety of genres written by many exceptionally talented writers, who are almost completely unknown to the Western public. In addition, the appearance on the literary scene of authors from remote corners of the Russian federation such as the Caucasus region of Dagestan, Siberia, and the Urals, has added their colorful, vibrant works into the mainstream of Russian literature. The voices of today include the writers of the Debut Prize – young and talented, fearless, and free from the limitations of the past.
All of this modified the literary landscape in Russia very quickly; today’s situation contrasts the past view of the Russian literary scene with one of the “thriving of conceptualism and metaphysical realism (http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/main- trends-contemporary-russian-literature). It is likely that contemporary literary processes in Russia will lead to the emergence of works equal to the great classical works of the past. It is difficult to predict when this will happen, however, or to speculate on whom we will call the next great Russian writer in the future.
The goal of this essay is to outline trends and bring to the surface questions about the possible directions in which Russian literature might go: will it be the rebirth of the traditional Russian psychological novel, or the growth of absurdist post-modernist writing, using the works of contemporary authors as examples?
There are a number of trends that have the potential to become distinctive characteristics of the Russian literary process in the future. Is it possible to define the options as New Realism vs. Magic Realism? The conventionality of such formula is evident but it does not cover the whole spectrum of today’s Russian literature.
In the “post-Pelevin era” (even if he continues to be a major player in the literary process and one of the most influential writers), the appearance of literature that overcomes conventional conceptual limits is obvious. One cannot characterize, for example, the prose of Olga Slavnikova as pure “magic realism” (or metaphysical writing). In her best works she goes far beyond the limits of any “isms”. Her short novel Bazilevs is reminiscent of Chekhov’s stories and one of the remarkable works that cannot be defined outside terms of the tradition of Russian classic literature where psychology is often intertwined with metaphysical ideas that inform the phenomenon of classical literature.
Slavnikova’s magnum opus, 2017, the winner of the Russian Booker prize in 2006, is one of her most unusual works. Generally speaking, it is an acclamation of Beauty, which overpowers human beings and takes revenge on them through destruction. The meaning of Slavnikova’s novel goes far beyond the fable of the adventurous novel, or love story, or satirical reflection on contemporary Russian society. It appears that all this is subordinated to one general idea that beauty as the quality of spiritual and metaphysical power can become a force in itself and restore the natural balance by destroying the intruders. This acclamation of breathtaking beauty makes her novel an extraordinary happening in the Russian literary landscape. Slavnikova’s descriptions of the natural harmony that confront the intruders are such an astounding hymn to the beauty of the fictional Riphean Mountains that they merit placement among the classics: “Beauty was flowing from all sides. Anfilogov scooped it up when he wanted to make dinner, out of the smiling river; sunlight fell on Anfilogov through this beauty – through the branches, through invisible aerial nets and the sun itself was transformed from the ordinary lamp you don’t look at into the focus of the beauty, the radiant object that irritated his nerves.” Unfortunately, these aspects of her work were not adequately reproduced in recent translation into English.
Another trend is the emergence of the traditional Russian psychological novel that was conventionally called “new realism.” Among many other authors are Zakhar Prilepin, Roman Senchin, Denis Osokin, and Alexander Ilichevsky, whose writing represents the flourishing of the traditions of classical psychological prose.
Ilichevsky’s recent novel Anarhisty is such a splendid continuation of classical literature about Russian provincial life with its long teas and conversations about great ideas from the past, the ways of love, that even the naturalistic scenes regarding drug addiction and humiliation do not spoil the impression of freshness and hopefulness.
Zakhar Prilepin’s talent is already prominent; his writing style combines the classically clear integrity of his language with the ability to reveal the inner universe of his heroes by very simple means. His early novel Sankya about a young rebel was devoted to the theme of the individual’s rights to action against a hostile and unjust society. His novel-in-stories Grekh (The Sin), winner of the National Bestseller of the Decade (2008, 2011), is considered to be one of the best contemporary Russian novels and is a strong testimony of the return to the traditions of Russian psychological prose. It is an incredibly optimistic and bright work even in its brutal openness to life’s problems.
Roman Senchin is one of the most prominent representatives of the “new realism”. His novel Eltyshevy ( The Eltyshevs) is one of the remarkable novels of 2010; it was nominated for Super National Bestseller and for Big Book Award. The story portrays the demise of the ordinary Russian family in the Siberian village where brutality rule lives, and life and death are only happenings without any significance to people. In his novel Senchin shows Russia’s path to a dead end, to life devoid of any spirituality, and at the end the disintegration of society and collapse of humanity. Could it be that his portrait of the disruption of contemporary life in Russia is one of the distinctive features of the new realism? If so, it is in jeopardy of becoming some kind of proletarian realism by Maxim Gorky, who contributed to a de-spiritualisation of Russian literature by some of his books. Roman Senchin’s powerful message might compel the reader to contemplate and even cry. This message, however, is devoid of any hope, the hopelessness is embodied in the essence of the novel and it continues till the end where seemingly the people’s lives “were pointless and stupid”, as were their passion and love, and even their deaths.
The realism of Senchin’s book cries out about the state of contemporary life in Russia, and in doing so conveys the need for bringing back the ideas of the great Russian humanists into ordinary life. The best Russian writers of today are searching for their answers to the eternal Russian question: Chto delat’? (What is to be done?) Their answers are as different as the writers themselves, but their openness to the world and their talents deserve to be recognized; we’ll continue to discuss the recent trends in contemporary Russian literature.
Contemporary Russian émigré literature has long been overlooked by Russian critics and the Russian public, as if this niche of Russian literature had not been of interest since the days of the charismatic Sergei Dovlatov or the famous Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
When discussing contemporary Russian émigré literature in the United States, it is important to emphasize that the recent wave of Russian émigré writers in the United States is a diverse entity that includes both Russian- and English-language writers. Two distinct trends can be observed, one of which could be defined as part of what is known as Russophone literature-that is, post-Soviet literature written by immigrants to the United States who continue to create literary works in Russian and in the Russian literary pattern. Others, especially those who came to the United States as adolescents, have switched to English, which has become their first language. Have their works become part of the broader American literature? In a sense, they get some recognition. For many young and talented creative writers who found themselves in the United States during the last wave of post-Soviet immigration in the 1990s and early 21st century, the dilemma has been whether to continue writing in Russian and face limited recognition among the Russian-speaking diaspora and a subdued reception in literary circles in the Russian metropolis, or to switch to an adopted language and try to succeed in the new country. The choice has often been English.
For the purpose of literary criticism, both trends can be seen as a continuation of the Russian literary tradition in the West. At the same time, it is obvious that the English-language works of Russian-origin émigré writers are moving further away from mainstream Russian literature in terms of themes and style and are being influenced by modern Western literature. On the other hand, the literary output of post-Soviet Russian émigrés over the past twenty-five years seems to show signs of the disappearance of a distinctive Russian literary identity. If the “first wave” of Russian émigré writers sought to preserve and develop the traditions of original Russian literature based on intense self-consciousness and preoccupation with philosophical issues, the new generation of émigré writers seems to lack the artistic merit of the great novelists and poets who preceded them.
In the midst of absolute freedom of thought and expression in the West, contemporary Russian émigré literature seems to be losing its unique appeal. According to Margarita Meklina, a bilingual Russian-American writer living in California, unlike the prolific, “albeit frightening, ‘white emigration era,’ recent Russophone literature in the West is not flourishing” (Meklina, Margarita. “Letter from Russia.” Context, N.16). Indeed, it is rare to see the works of recent emigrant writers on a par with the great works of earlier generations of Russian literary emigration, such as Nabokov, Bunin, or Gazdanov.
This is not the case with authors who have switched to English in their works. The credit for this goes to one of the most successful Russian-American novelists, NYT bestselling author Gary Shteingart, and perhaps to Olga Grushin, author of the highly praised novel The Dream Life of Sukhanov (2005). Speaking of contemporary Russian-American writers, Columbia University professor and journalist Keith Gessen emphasized that they all “emerged from the mantle of Shteyngart,” who in fact began the “odyssey” of the post-Soviet Russian immigrant’s wandering and survival in modern America. And indeed, the theme of “Russians in America” was brilliantly introduced by Gary Shteyngart. His literary triumph began with The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2002), which “The Guardian” called one of the best debuts of the year. Its main hero, Vladimir Girshkin, became the prototype for a whole series of characters written in the genre of “black comedy” based on the immigrant experience. Shteyngart’s Absurdistan (2006) continued the theme and was named one of the ten best books of the year. More recently, after exploring the Russian Jewish immigrant experience in America in Lake Success (2018), Shteyngart turned to the theme of American multiculturalism in his award-winning novel Our Country Friends (2021). There, eight friends of different national origins find themselves in the home of a Russian-American writer during the pandemic quarantine.
The aura of the “American immigrant novel” genre is well accepted in the United States, and many emigre writers writing in English have explored this theme. This genre is particularly popular among recent Jewish immigrant women writers. Anya Ulinich and Lara Vapnyar, Sana Krasikov and Ellen Littman, Yelena Akhtiorskaya and Maria Kuznetsova have written excellent books about the lives of Jewish, Ukrainian, Russian and Georgian immigrants in America, based on their own based on their own experiences.
What are the main factors influencing the literary work by Russian-language authors in the U.S.?
Cultural shock, displacement and nostalgia, as well as a new linguistic environment, are factors that many writers say influenced their work at the beginning of their literary careers in the United States. Ellen Litman, who immigrated to the U.S. with her parents while she was in college, says that the presence of her past life had a lasting effect: “So I was always interested in the question: How would my life have turned out if I had stayed? And that parallel, imagined life exists somewhere” (Satchkova, Svetlana. “The immigrant era Seven Soviet-born writers who made it big in the U.S. reflect on their lives,” Meduza, April 24, 202o). In her recent interview to “Long River Review”, Litman reflects: “Everything my life was built on was disappearing. It felt unimaginable to leave. Immigration is really hard on your ego…Your whole sense of self and identity changes. It was incredibly hard on my parents. It felt like everything was breaking apart in various ways. Nothing felt normal.” (An interview with Prof. Ellen Littman, “Long River Review,” May 8, 2021).
There are many factors that influence Russian émigré literature in the U.S. Perhaps one of the most important is the difficulty of reaching a broad Russian audience by writing in Russian in America. Margarita Meklina argues that “there is almost no Russian literary criticism abroad; writers outside of Russia feel that their literature has no meaning and write without hope of seeing their work published” (Meklina, ibid.). Literary success in the Russian metropolis often depends on recognition by literary critics and participation in prestigious literary competitions such as the NOS, Andrey Bely, or the Russian Prize.
It is sometimes difficult for young writers to find a publisher. Local publishers often reject their work on the pretext of lack of commercial interest. For talented but unknown Russian-speaking writers living in the United States, breaking through this “containment wall” is sometimes almost impossible. Often arriving as teenagers with their parents, they struggle to find their identity in a new land. The lack of opportunities and decent jobs for educated Russian immigrants, who have to start from the bottom in order to succeed, is mentioned in almost every “immigrant novel”. In fact, many successful immigrant writers in the United States have told similar stories in their books. Anya Ulinich, in her book Petropolis, wrote a wonderful, funny, and sad story about the adventures of the “Russian bride” Sasha in America, who could be a prototype for many other characters. Vasily Aksyonov, who walked the path of being an émigré writer in the US after being a successful author in Europe, articulated this in a 1992 interview with the LAT: “Whether it is easier to be a writer here (in America) is another question. Again, it’s easier to be a writer if you have a professorship.” Aksyonov lived for twenty years in Washington, D.C., and Virginia, where he taught Russian literature at George Mason University and other colleges, and worked as a journalist for Radio Liberty in Europe. And indeed, a university professorship often paves the way to a literary career very quickly.
However, it would be a mistake to assume that being “uprooted” from one’s homeland results in a loss of creative potential or the ability to write outstanding works in one’s native language. Yuz Aleshkovsky (1929-2022), one of the best contemporary Russian émigré writers, emphasized in his interview with the BBC that Russian literature in America still depends on the mother tongue: “It has become even more treasured because it was with me in my exile, although the linguistic space, the main one, all its music and sound remained there. So, there was a sense of deep kinship mixed with the sense of language. What was obvious to me there (in Russia) was perceived by me here (in the USA)” (BBC, March 22, 2022).
Some Russophone novelists and poets, living in the United States have become popular names in the thriving literary market in Russia today. Among them are the wonderful poets Polina Barskova and Bakhyt Kenzheyev, Anna Glazova, Andrei Ivanov, and the New York-based Russian writer and doctor Alexander Stressin, whose book New York Rounds won the 2019 NOS Prize; as well as Vadim Mesyats with his interesting publishing project “New Gulliver,” and others. Speaking about poetry, Alla Gorbunova, a prominent Russian poet, writer, and critic, emphasized the duality of contemporary Russophone poetry, which can be deeply rooted in the Russian poetic tradition and at the same time completely open to the experience of other cultures and languages (An Interview with Alla Gorbunova, by Alexandra Tkacheva. Punctured Lines, 02/09/2022).
What’s next for Russian émigré authors?
The emergence of several writers of Soviet origin who have achieved both literary and commercial success in the United States confirms that at least some Russian writers living in the United States feel drawn to Anglophone literature. Having successfully mastered the “American immigrant” theme and achieved a certain literary recognition in the United States, they turn to the realities of the new country. Their names are probably little known to readers in Russia, but many of them have achieved a special status as Russian-American writers who have successfully explored the themes of immigration, identity, the previous life, and adventures in the new country. They have very different literary styles, but they are distinctive authors who have already taken their place in American literature and can still be considered part of the Russian cultural tradition. Olga Grushin, in an interview with Alden Mudge, emphasizes the unique situation of Russian-American writers: “I strive for a kind of fusion of Russian and English in my use of language… I think it’s important for me to preserve the Russian cadences and feel in my work. On the other hand, I live here and I’ve been writing in English for 20 years, which has obviously changed me.” And perhaps this is the best answer to the question of the future development of Russian-American literature as a unique part of the great world literature.
06/29/2022
POLINA BARSKOVA
Bio: Polina Barskova was born in Leningrad in 1976, began writing poetry at age eight and published her first book of poetry in 1991. Her poetry has won her recognition as one of the best Russian poets of her generation. Barskova immigrated to the United States at age 20 to pursue graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, having already earned a degree in classical literature from St. Petersburg State University. She received her doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2006. She is currently an assistant professor of Russian literature at Hampshire College. Three books of her poetry have appeared in English translation: This Lamentable City, The Zoo in Winter, and Relocations. Her poignant masterpiece, Living Pictures, about the siege of Leningrad during World War II, was published in Russia in 2019; an English translation was published in 2022.
OLGA GRUSHIN
Bio: Born in Moscow, Olga Grushin spent her early childhood in Prague. After returning to Moscow, she was educated at Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and Moscow State University before receiving a scholarship to Emory University in 1989. She graduated from Emory in 1993. She became a naturalized US citizen in 2002, but retains Russian citizenship. Since coming to the United States, she has been an interpreter for President Jimmy Carter, a cocktail waitress in a jazz bar, a translator at the World Bank, a research analyst at a Washington law firm, an editor at Harvard University’s Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. She is the author of three previous novels, Forty Rooms, The Line and The Dream Life of Sukhanov. Her debut novel, The Dream Life of Sukhanov, won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, earned her a place on Granta’s once-a-decade Best Young American Novelists list, and was one of The New York Times’ Notable Books of the Year. Both itand The Line were among The Washington Post’s Ten Best Books of the Year. Grushin writes in English, and her work has been translated into sixteen languages. Her latest novel The Charmed Wife was published in 2021. A citizen of Russia and the United States, Grushin lives outside Washington, D.C.
OLGA ISAEVA
Bio: Olga Isaeva is a writer, journalist, laureate of the Russian America contest, and participant of the Moscow Poetry Biennale 2007. She was born in Kazakhstan in 1958 and graduated from the Krupskaya Moscow Pedagogical Institute. Before immigrating to the USA, Isaeva worked as a high school teacher. Since 1988, she has lived in New York. She has published her work in the Russian and émigré magazines Novy Zhurnal, Time and Us, Word, Interpoeziya,New Youth.
SANA KRASIKOV
Bio: Sana Krasikov is a Russian-American writer. She was born in Ukraine and grew up in the Republic of Georgia as well as in the United States. She graduated from Cornell University in 2001. Krasikov’s debut short story collection, Another Year, published in 2008, gained critical acclaim for its exploration of the lives of Russian and Georgian immigrants in the United States. In 2017, Krasikov published The Patriots, a novel that explores the complicated relationship between Russia and America through the life story of three generations of American family moving back and forth between America and Russia. The novel’s protagonist, Florence Fine, returned from Brooklyn to Moscow during the Great Depression. In 2017, Krasikov was named one of the best young American writers by Granta magazine.
IRINA MURAVYOVA
Bio: Irina Muravyova was born in 1952 in Moscow. She immigrated to the United States in 1985 and currently lives in Boston. Muravyova has several books of prose to her credit. Her novel The Angel’s Day covers history of three generations of Russian émigrés, her Young Lady is a finalist for the Bunin Prize. Muravyova’s novel, Beatrice’s Reflection (2012) examines Dante’s life through his love at first sight for Beatrice.
Helga Landauer (Helga Olshvang)
Bio: Helga Landauer (Olshvang) was born in Moscow, Russia, where she graduated from Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), received her Bachelor’s and Master of Fine Arts degree and worked on Russian National Television, writing and directing programs for broadcast. Her poems have been published in major Russian magazines and anthologies. Since 1996, she lives in the United States. Helga works as a writer and filmmaker. Her documentaries Being Far from Venice (1998), Objects in Mirror are Closer than They Appear (2002), A Journey of Dmitry Shostakovich (2006, co-directed with Oksana Dvornichenko), A Film About Anna Akhmatova (2008), and Diversions (2009) have been screened at many international film festivals and significant American and European venues such as Carnegie Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Louvre Auditorium.
Kseniya Melnik
Bio: Kseniya Melnik was born in Magadan in the northeast of Russia and immigrated to Alaska in 1998, at the age of fifteen. Melnik’s birthplace in one of the harshest and most exotic places in the Russian Far East, Magadan, as well as her immigration to Alaska, set her apart from other former Soviet immigrants who mostly settled in New York or California. She received her Master of Fine Arts from New York University, her work has been published in Brooklyn Rail, Epoch, Prospect, Virginia Quarterly Review, and was selected for Granta’s New Voices series. Her wonderful debut book of short stories Snow in May (2016) tells about ordinary Russian people from Kolyma and Magadan.
Gary Shteyngart
Bio: Gary Shteyngart is the New York Times bestselling author of the memoir Little Failureand the novels Super Sad True Love Story, Absurdistan, Lake Success. He was born in 1972 in Leningrad. He was only seven years old when his family immigrated to America from the Soviet Union. His debut novel, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2002), written in the genre of black comedy, had a great success with readers. His new novel, Our Country Friends, was published in 2021. Steingart is one of the few contemporary writers of Russian descent to gain fame in the West. He writes in English.
Maxim Shrayer
Bio: Maxim Shrayer, an author, scholar and translator, is a professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies at Boston College. Born in 1967 to a writer’s family, Shrayer grew up in Moscow and immigrated to the United States in 1987. Shrayer attended Moscow University, Brown University, Rutgers University and Yale. Since 1996, he has been teaching at Boston College. Among his books is autobiographic Waiting for America (2007).
Lara Vapnyar
Bio: Lara Vapnyar is a Russian-American author currently living in the United States. She was born in Moscow in 1975 and earned a degree in Russian Language and Literature from Moscow University. In 1998 she immigrated to the United States. Vapnyar recalled that her first experience in the new country was “a feeling of loneliness and alienation”. Vapnyar began to write stories in English and her first work was published in 2002. In 2011, Vapnyar received a Guggenheim Fellowship and is currently working as a professor of creative writing at Columbia University. Vapnyar has published several novels and two collections of short stories. Similar to other relatively young Russian-American authors, who immigrated to the United States in 90s, Vapnyar is writing exclusively in English but considers herself a “transcultural writer”. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and others.
Selected BibliographyCompiled by Bud Woodward
Bezmozgis, David. The Free World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.
Bezmozgis, David. Natasha and Other Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.
Budman, Mark. My Life at First Try: A Novel. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2008
Gorokhova, Elena. A Mountain of Crumbs: A Memoir. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2010.
Grushin, Olga.The Dream Life of Sukhanov. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2005.
Grushin, Olga.The Line. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2010.
Grushin, Olga. Forty Rooms, New York: Marian Wood Books/Putnam’s
Kaminer, Wladimir. Russian Disco: Tales of Everyday Lunacy on the Streets of Berlin. London: Ebury, 2002.