Russian literature
Russian literature Literary works of Russia until 1917, then of the Soviet Union until 1991. Thereafter the literature properly belongs to the individual republics. Russian literature has its origins in religious works dating from c.ad 1000. They include biographies of saints, chronicles, hymns and sermons. After the 1600s, Western influences are found. Romanticism beginning in the late 1700s – dominated by Nikolai Karamzin (Letters of a Russian Traveller, 1790) and Alexander Pushkin (Boris Godunov, 1825) – gave way to the realism of Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace, 1869), Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov, 1879–80), Anton Chekhov (Uncle Vanya, 1899), and Maxim Gorky (The Lower Depths, 1902). The revolutionary feelings that dominated the early part of the 20th century witnessed a literary revival. Major figures included the symbolist poet Alexsandr Blok (The Twelve, 1918) and the futurists, such as Vladimir Mayakovsky. After the Russian Revolution (1917), many writers fled overseas to escape censorship. The authors who remained could only depict favourable images of the Soviet Union. The major writers of this period were Boris Pasternak and Alexei Tolstoy (Road to Calvary, 1941). Criticism of the regime was published, however, in works by novelists Alexander Solzhenitsyn (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, 1962) and Yuri Trifonov (Another Life, 1975) and by poet Alexander Tvardovsky. See also socialist realism
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Russian literature