Introduction
(1881–1894), and Nicholas II (1894–1917). After
efforts to organize a revolt among the peasantry had
proved unsuccessful in the 1870s, revolutionaries
directed their attention toward urban industrial workers in the hopes of sparking the flames of revolution.
Vladimir Lenin, the future first leader of the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics, or Soviet Union, became
involved in politics while a university student in the
late 1880s. As a member of the Social Democratic
Labor Party, Lenin favored revolution to overthrow
the tsarist regime, basing his ideas on theories developed by the German political philosopher Karl Marx.
Along with many other Russians with radical views,
Lenin was persecuted by the government and spent
many of the early years of the twentieth century in
political exile in Europe.
In 1904 Russian expansionism in the Far East
led to war with Japan. On “Bloody Sunday,” 22 January (Old Style, 9 January) 1905, a crowd of workers
marched on the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to
submit a petition to Tsar Nicholas II, son of Tsar Alexander III. The harsh response by the government, in
which several hundred demonstrators were killed and
wounded, incited additional riots and strikes. By
October 1905 Nicholas had made some political concessions to try to quell the unrest, including the establishment of a popularly elected legislative assembly
called the Duma. Nicholas also proclaimed amnesty
for exiles living abroad, and Lenin returned to Russia
in November. While revolutionary fervor reached a
peak that year, Lenin participated little in this unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the government.
In 1912 Lenin, again in exile abroad, formally
broke with the Russian Democratic Labor Party and
formed the independent Bolshevik Party. Russia’s
entrance into World War I in 1914 weakened the
imperial regime’s tenuous sway over the country still
further. The high war casualties—more than a million
died by 1917—increased discontent among workers.
Riots broke out in St. Petersburg (renamed Petrograd
from 1911 to 1924) in early 1917; and on 15 March
(Old Style, 2 March) Nicholas II abdicated the
throne. In response, members of the Duma and the
Petrograd Soviet, or governmental council, negoti-
Diversity, continuity, rupture, and change all
characterize the development of Russian poetry during the Soviet period. Even as revolutionaries succeeded in toppling the centuries-old tsarist autocracy,
Russian poets similarly bent on a break with the past
rushed headlong into the twentieth century on a wave
of literary experimentation and innovation. After the
Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, many writers chose
to remain in the country under its new leadership,
but others chose to emigrate. Most of these émigrés
continued to pursue poetic trends current at the time
of their emigration, while tentatively experimenting
with the literary traditions of their new host countries.
During periods of repression, persecution, and relative freedom, poets in the Soviet Union continued to
adapt, write privately “for the drawer,” or emigrate.
An explosion of poetic innovation, emerging in the
1980s from the rich literary underground that had
formed since the 1950s, accompanied the final, sudden breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. The entries
included in DLB 359: Russian Poets of the Soviet Era—a
mix of figures well known during their lifetime as well
as those whose contributions are yet to be fully recognized—provide a window on an era that historians
and literary scholars alike are only beginning to
assess.*
Popular resistance to the absolute monarchy
that had endured in Russia for centuries increased
following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in
1881, through the reigns of Alexander III
*Note: Many prominent poets—such as Anna
Akhmatova, Konstantin Bal’mont, Andrei Bely, Aleksandr Blok, Joseph Brodsky, Ivan Bunin, Sergei Esenin,
Zinaida Gippius (Hippius), Velimir Khlebnikov, Mikhail
Kuzmin, Vladimir Maiakovsky, Osip Mandel’shtam,
Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva—have already been
featured in the Dictionary of Literary Biography series,
including DLB 272: Russian Prose Writers Between the
World Wars; DLB 285: Russian Writers Since 1980; DLB
295: Russian Writers of the Silver Age, 1890–1925; DLB
302: Russian Prose Writers After World War II; and DLB
317: Twentieth-Century Russian Émigré Writers. For
authors mentioned in this general introduction that are
not treated in DLB 359: Russian Poets of the Soviet Era,
please check the index at the end of this volume.
xvii
Introduction
DLB 359
Blok, and Andrei Bely. While poetry remained the
Symbolists’ preferred vehicle of expression, prose
works such as Fedor Sologub’s Melkii bes (1907; translated as The Little Demon, 1916) and Bely’s Peterburg
(1916; translated as St. Petersburg, 1959) quickly
became accepted as Symbolist masterpieces.
At the time the Bolshevik Party seized power in
1917 the Symbolist movement had begun to lose its
momentum as it splintered into a variety of opposing
factions. A new generation of Realist prose writers,
including Maksim Gor’ky, had eroded the Symbolists’
literary supremacy even further. The 1909 closing of
the Symbolist journal Vesy (The Scales), after only five
years in existence, seemed a harbinger of the impending demise of the movement. At the same time, many
poets had begun to search for poetic techniques
more grounded in the physical world. Symbolist poet
Mikhail Kuzmin’s essay “O prekrasnoi iasnosti” (On
Beautiful Clarity), published in the journal Apollon in
1910, became one of the battle cries for a new movement based on greater clarity in language and an
emphasis on themes and images culled directly from
earthly reality.
Within this environment of literary conflict and
change, new poetic schools and movements began to
emerge. Following the lead of the late-nineteenthcentury French Parnassians such as Charles-MarieRené Leconte de Lisle and Sully Prudhomme, the
Russian Acmeists called for an end to the Symbolists’
otherworldly concerns. Instead, the Russian Acmeists
consciously strove for concrete imagery and directness in expression, while they retained the Symbolists’
focus on language as poetry’s most important building block. The Acmeists especially revered the classical balance of the early-nineteenth-century Russian
poetry of Aleksandr Pushkin and the exuberant physicality expressed in the works of the sixteenth-century
writers William Shakespeare and François Rabelais.
Their leader, Nikolai Gumilev, first articulated his
ideas in one of his series of “Pis’ma o russkoi poezii”
(Letters on Russian Poetry) published in Apollon in
August 1910. He later elaborated the principles of
Acmeism in a declaration published in the first issue
of Apollon in 1913 called “Nasledie simvolizma i
akmeizm” (Acmeism and the Legacy of Symbolism).
This manifesto proclaimed the death of Symbolism
and the birth of a new poetic school to be called
Acmeism (derived from the Greek word akme, which
means the highest degree), or Adamism (designating
a masculine, clear approach).
Gumilev organized a group of poets interested
in his ideas called the Tsekh poetov (Poets’ Guild) in
1911. Its members included Georgii Adamovich,
Georgii Ivanov, Elizaveta Kuzmina-Karavaeva, and for
ated a compromise to form a provisional government
to replace the autocracy. Lenin returned to Russia
shortly afterward in April 1917 to take advantage of
the weakness of the newly formed government. In
October the Bolsheviks seized power and established
a headquarters in Petrograd. After consolidating their
power and moving the capital to Moscow, the new
Bolshevik government became the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1922. After Lenin’s
death in 1924, Joseph Stalin, along with Lev Kamenev
and Grigorii Zinov’ev, gained control of the Communist Party’s leadership in a political struggle with Leon
Trotsky on the left and Nikolai Bukharin on the right.
By 1928 Stalin had seized power and Trotsky fled the
country the next year. During his long reign Stalin
eventually gained official control of every facet of Russian life, including its literature.
The country’s turbulent political environment
in the first decades of the twentieth century gave rise
to the appearance and rapid growth of new poetic
movements. Writers struggled to create new
approaches to poetry in the presence of the dying literary movement of Symbolism, which had emerged
in the last decade of the nineteenth century as a reaction against the Realist tradition with its emphasis on
civic themes. Realist novelists such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Ivan Turgenev created sweeping social and psychological panoramas that explored
contemporary problems. These powerful writers,
however, began to pass from the literary scene in the
last decades of the nineteenth century. Dostoevsky
died in 1881, followed by Turgenev in 1883, and Tolstoy in 1910. In the literary vacuum that these writers
left behind, Anton Chekhov gained prominence with
his short stories and plays that moved away from his
predecessors’ efforts to provide breadth and objectivity in the treatment of social problems and solutions
in order to focus more energetically on subjectivity
and individual psychology.
The Russian Symbolist poets borrowed many of
their ideas from the French Symbolists, such as
Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, and Charles
Baudelaire. Seeking to capture something of an
underlying, intangible, or mystical experience of reality beneath the mundane surface of life in the physical world, the Russian Symbolists employed
impressionistic imagery and symbols. The advocates
of Russian Symbolism in Petrograd included Zinaida
Gippius (Hippius) and her husband Dmitrii Merezhkovsky. Two other Symbolist poets, Valerii Briusov and
Konstantin Bal’mont, dominated the direction of the
Symbolist movement in Moscow. At the end of the
century, younger poets joined this older generation of
Symbolists, including Viacheslav Ivanov, Aleksandr
xviii
DLB 359
Introduction
poets had begun to call themselves the Academy of
Ego-Poetry. They sought to celebrate the individual’s
quest for selfhood as they reflected on the hectic pace
of modern industrialized life. Experimenting with
language by coining new words and rhymes, these
poets also attempted to undermine ordinary modes
of rational thought through the development of a socalled zaum (transrational) poetry.
Vadim Shershenevich organized the Mezzanine
of Poetry, the Ego-Futurists’ group in Moscow, with
Lev Zak in 1913. In 1914 Shershenevich and Severianin established close ties with the Cubo-Futurists, and
Shershenevich served as chief editor of the publication, Pervyi zhurnal russkikh futuristov (The First Journal of Russian Futurists). Shershenevich subsequently
abandoned the Futurists altogether in 1918 to found
Imazhinizm (Imaginism, also called Imagism) a distinct Russian literary movement unrelated to AngloAmerican Imagism championed by Ezra Pound.
Another smaller Futurist group, Centrifuge,
which included the poets Boris Pasternak and Nikolai
Aseev, appeared in 1914. Although these poets did
not initially conceive of themselves as a Futurist
group, they later accepted this designation when
applied to them by others. Opposed to establishing
strict guidelines for their poetry, these poets incorporated elements of the Russian classical tradition, epitomized by poets such as Pushkin, but also included
aspects of French and Russian Symbolism in their
poetry. Similar to other Futurists, they frequently
favored urban themes and technical experimentation. After the demise of Centrifuge around 1920,
Aseev joined the Cubo-Futurists.
The main movement of Russian Futurism,
Cubo-Futurism, continued to exist after the dissolution of the other Futurist groups when the Bolsheviks
came to power in 1917. In 1910 a group of poets who
described themselves as “budetliane” (those who will
be) organized a group to help nurture the talents of
their members. These poets resisted rigid guidelines
for writing poetry but favored urban themes and technical experimentation. Early members of the movement included Velimir Khlebnikov and the poet,
playwright, artist, and prose writer, Elena Guro. Vladimir Maiakovsky, who became the Futurists’ most
famous poet, and Aleksei Kruchenykh joined the
group a year later. In 1912 the group published a
poetry collection as well as its famous manifesto:
“Poshchechina obshchestvennomu vkusu” (A Slap in
the Face of Public Taste), which advocated throwing
the famous Russian nineteenth-century Realist writers, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy “from the ship
of Contemporary Life.” Although they originally
called themselves Hylaea, the group became known
a while, Blok, Kuzmin, and Sologub. The poet Sergei
Gorodetsky, another of Acmeism’s founders, served as
the group’s theoretician. Anna Akhmatova and Osip
Mandel’shtam achieved fame as the group’s most talented poets. After the breakup of the Tsekh poetov in
1914, another group with the same name emerged in
1920, and counted Gumilev, Adamovich, Ivanov, Mandel’shtam, and Konstantin Vaginov among its members.
The demise of Symbolism and the birth of new
literary groups and movements occurred amidst the
political and social instability that prevailed in the
years following Russia’s entrance into World War I in
1914. A bloody Civil War between the Bolsheviks and
their allies (known as the Reds) and the remaining
tsarist sympathizers (known as the Whites) was most
fiercely fought in the years 1918–1921 with skirmishes
continuing into 1923. To add to the misery and privations brought on by war, famines, and epidemics, the
victorious Bolsheviks introduced a policy of “War
Communism,” which included government seizures
of grain harvests from peasant farmers. The resulting
incidents of violent resistance to these measures
forced the government to retreat from its plans of collectivization. Instead, the new regime enacted the
New Economic Policy (NEP) from 1921 until 1928,
which encouraged private business ownership in an
effort to establish economic and social stability. When
Stalin gained full control of the government in 1928,
one of his first policy decisions was to replace the NEP
with a series of Five Year Plans to expedite collectivization and industrialization. He also began a ruthless
campaign to quash dissent.
The extremely influential Russian literary movement of Futurism originated about 1910 and gradually gained momentum as a result of the turmoil and
changes that arose from the Bolsheviks’ rise to power
throughout the early 1920s. The Futurists shared the
Symbolists’ keen interest in language, but pushed
their own linguistic experiments to new extremes.
Rejecting the Acmeists’ quest for a more harmonious
union between form and content, the Futurists concentrated on placing less emphasis in their poetry on
the mundane details of concrete reality and more on
the creation of poetry. The Futurist groups—the EgoFuturists, the Mezzanine of Poetry, Centrifuge, and
the Cubo-Futurists—all shared a passion for linguistic
experimentation and the creation of new forms and
functions for poetic language.
Inspired by Italian Futurism, developed by
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Igor’ Severianin and
Konstantin Olimpov formulated the fundamental
ideas that evolved into Ego-Futurism in Petrograd in
1911. By the beginning of 1912 this group of Russian
xix
Introduction
DLB 359
Characterizing themselves as the most independent and revolutionary literary group, the Imaginists
disdained the Cubo-Futurists as conservative, sycophantic beneficiaries of the Bolshevik government.
They denied that the Futurists also advocated experimentation with poetic language, accusing them of
elevating poetic content over language and form. The
Imaginists strove to fulfill the potential of every word
to evoke a mental image in the reader’s mind and
asserted in their manifesto in 1919 that the purpose
of art “is the revelation of life through the image and
the rhythm of images.” These poets also experimented with syntax by omitting adjectives and verbs
to create unusual poetic effects. Their poetry often
included bold innovations with rhythm and rhyme,
along with unusual, shocking, and sometimes
obscene imagery.
Similar to the Futurists, the Imaginists managed
their own publishing ventures. Because the government refused to recognize their group, the Imaginists
established a fictitious organization in 1918 as a false
front to disguise their meetings and activities as the
Obshchestvo imazhinistov (Society of Imaginists).
They also opened a café called Stoilo Pegasa (The Stable of Pegasus). After yielding to government pressure to close that café, they opened the café Kalosh
(Galosh). A popular movement, Imaginist groups
sprang up in Khar’kov, Kiev, Tashkent, and Rostov.
After Esenin’s suicide in 1925, the group in Moscow
seemed to lose its cohesion and ceased to exist altogether by 1927.
Formalism as a methodology for literary analysis
and study, similar to Imaginism as a literary movement, evolved from Futurism. Vladimir Maiakovsky
formed the Obshchestvo izucheniia poeticheskogo
iazyka (Society for the Study of Poetic Language) in
Petrograd to explore literary history and the function
of literary language. This group aimed to create an
independent methodology for literary analysis analogous to the scientific method used in the natural sciences to replace theories appropriated from history
and philosophy. The group included poets but also
scholars associated with the Moskovskii lingvisticheskii kruzhok (Moscow Linguistic Circle), such as
Roman Jakobson and Viktor Shklovsky. Other proponents of formalism included Iurii Tynianov and Boris
Eikhenbaum, as well as more- peripheral figures, such
as the poet Osip Brik and the literary critic and theorist Boris Tomashevsky. The Formalists’ insistence on
the independence of literary creation soon provoked
criticism from the leadership of the Communist Party,
who increasingly supported a didactic role for literature to teach readers about Soviet ideology. Hounded
by the government, Shklovsky publicly denounced
as the Cubo-Futurists in 1913. Since they enthusiastically embraced the new Bolshevik regime as a fresh
start on the road to modernity, the Cubo-Futurists initially enjoyed the new government’s support in the
form of funds to establish a press and a newspaper.
While displaying some preference toward the Futurists in allocating funds and other forms of support,
the government also tolerated other literary groups.
Despite their friendly, mutually supportive early
relationship, the Cubo-Futurists and the Bolshevik
government soon encountered increasing conflicts.
The Cubo-Futurists claimed that the revolution had
created a new “cultural consumer” with new tastes
and interests. Lenin, however, did not particularly like
the Futurists’ poetry or their attacks on the nineteenth-century Russian Realist tradition as a useless
vestige of the tsarist past. Lenin urged his chief cultural minister, Anatolii Lunacharsky, to withdraw all
support from the Cubo-Futurists; in 1919 the government closed the group’s press and newspaper.
Undaunted by this setback, the Cubo-Futurists
continued their quest to represent the country’s cultural future. In early 1923 they again received governmental permission to establish a press and began to
publish the journal Levyi front khudozhestva (The Left
Front of Arts), or Lef, as a forum to debate new literary and linguistic ideas. Financial difficulties forced
them to cease publishing the journal in 1925 after
only seven issues. Two years later, when the CuboFuturists again hoped to establish a journal, the Soviet
leadership no longer advocated a tolerant acceptance
of literary heterogeneity and proclaimed an open
allegiance to the proletarian writers’ groups. Nevertheless, the Cubo-Futurists gained permission to publish Novyi levyi front khudozhestva (New Left Front of
Arts), or Novyi lef (New Lef), in 1927. The suicide of
Maiakovsky in 1930 presaged the end of Futurism,
and in 1932 the Soviet government under Stalin dissolved all of the existing literary groups to found the
single Writers’ Union.
A variety of other competing literary movements and groups appeared in the artistically vibrant
years immediately following the Bolsheviks’ rise to
power. Imazhinizm, founded by the former Futurist
Shershenevich, thrived in Moscow as a successful
independent literary movement from 1919 until
1927. Shershenevich again based his ideas on the
work of Marinetti, whom he now heralded as “the first
Imaginist.” The group published a manifesto in January 1919 in the Voronezh journal Sirena (The Siren),
signed by the three founding members: Shershenevich, Sergei Esenin, and Anatolii Mariengof. A second
Imaginist group headed by Grigorii Shmerel’son in
Petrograd remained active from 1922 to 1925.
xx
DLB 359
Introduction
of the prose writer Evgenii Zamiatin, included novelists Konstantin Fedin, Vsevolod Ivanov, Veniamin
Kaverin, and Mikhail Zoshchenko, as well as the poet
Elizaveta Polonskaia. Nikolai Tikhonov joined the
group in the early 1920s and continued to write
poetry influenced by Acmeism. Kaverin’s “Rech’ ne
proiznesennaia na vos’mi godovshchine ‘Ordera
Serapionovykh brat’ev’” (A Speech Not Presented at
the Eighth Anniversary of “the Serapion Brotherhood”) in 1929 became a defining event that also
coincidentally heralded the dissolution soon afterward of this stylistically diverse group of writers.
Marx had theorized that literature and art
reflected the interests of the ruling class in any given
society. In an early attempt to replace the elite culture
of the autocracy, the prose writer and playwright Maksim Gor’ky, the novelist and philosopher Aleksandr
Bogdanov, and the poet, dramatist, and critic Antaloly
Lunacharsky attempted to nurture a distinct proletarian art. In 1909–1911 at Gor’ky’s villa in Capri, then in
Bologna, the three men began teaching classes for
workers at two newly opened schools. Lunacharsky
also began to espouse the creation of a single organization to unite the various proletarian cultural groups
that had formed in Russia before the collapse of the
tsarist regime, many through trade unions or factory
committees. After following Lenin back to Russia in
1917 when the Bolsheviks seized power, Gor’ky, Lunacharsky, and Bogdanov formed Proletkult, an acronym for Proletarskie kul’turno-prosvititel’skie
organizatsii (Proletarian Cultural and Educational
Organizations). They also established literary workshops to train new proletarian writers.
Proletkult soon attracted the participation of
writers affiliated with the avant-garde as well as other
proletarian literary groups. Poets such as Vasilii Kazin,
a member of a competing proletarian literary group,
Kuznitsa (The Smithy), joined Proletkult. Even poets
associated with the former tsarist elite, such as Bely
and the Acmeist poet Vladislav Khodasevich, participated in Proletkult’s educational programs. Despite
Proletkult’s support for the new government, Communist Party leaders began to criticize the organization by 1920, in part because of Bogdanov’s support
of the group’s independence from governmental
influence. Proletkult, along with the other independent literary groups, ceased to exist after the creation
of the Writers’ Union in 1932.
Some of the Kuznitsa writers formed yet
another proletarian literary organization in 1920
called “Vsesoiuznaia assotsiatsiia proletarskikh
pisatelei” or VAPP (The All-Union Association of Proletarian Writers). By 1921 a faction led by the group
Oktiabr’ (October) openly began to promote their
the “mistakes” of Formalism by 1930, and the movement dissolved in the Soviet Union. Formalism, however, became extremely influential abroad, where it
led to the literary movement of Structuralism—joining linguistic analysis based on the research of Swiss
linguist Ferdinand de Saussure with theories about
the creation of systems of meaning in fields as diverse
as literature and anthropology.
The ideas that formed the basis for Constructivism as a literary movement first originated among a
group of Soviet visual artists influenced by Pablo
Picasso’s “Constructions,” such as his Violin (1915).
Instead of carving a figure from stone similar to traditional statuary, Picasso arranged common, prefabricated elements such as nails, string, or wire to create
these abstract sculptures. A group of artists, including
founding members Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin, and Pavel Filonov, formed the group, the Institut
khudozhestvennoi kul’tury (Institute for Artistic Culture). These artists wanted to use Constructivist ideas
to help develop the artistic sensibility of ordinary citizens by fashioning fresh, modernistic images of everyday life in the new Soviet state that also would serve to
educate the average citizen about the aims and goals
of socialism. By 1921 Constructivism had attracted the
attention of the Futurist writers who had gathered
around the journal Lef.
Constructivism emerged as a literary movement
in 1924 with the formation of the Literaturnyi tsentr
konstruktivistov (Literary Center of Constructivists)
in Moscow. Its members included the poets Eduard
Bagritsky, Vera Inber, Il’ia Sel’vinsky—three of the
early poets—as well as Boris Pasternak and Kornelii
Zelinsky, who served as their theorists. Zelinsky developed a literary technique called the “lokal’nyi priem”
(local method). Bagritsky and Sel’vinsky applied this
approach especially successfully, introducing slang,
regional dialects, and the rhythms of folk song into
their poetry to elaborate their themes. Constructivist
poets, filmmakers, and artists used the journal Novyi
lef to present their ideas since they shared a belief that
mass media would provide a vehicle to mold a socialist art created for everyone, not just an educated elite
as in tsarist Russia.
An independent literary group that came to
call itself the Serapionovy brat’ia (Serapion Brothers)
emerged in 1921; they took their name from Die Serapionbrüder (The Serapion Brothers, 1818–1821), a
four-volume collection of tales by the German writer
E. T. A. Hoffmann, in which a group of friends gathers to tell stories. The Russian Serapions met initially
only to support each other as writers, not to form a literary group or movement. The members of the
group, most of them greatly influenced by the ideas
xxi
Introduction
DLB 359
sessed an intuitive understanding of the way to create
works appropriate to the new Soviet society, without
the Communist Party’s guidance.
Despite the government’s increasing advocacy
of proletarian literature, new avant-garde groups continued to emerge in the latter part of the 1920s. The
Ob”edinenie real’nogo iskusstva (The Association for
Real Art), or Oberiu, flourished from 1927 to 1930 as
a literary and artistic circle in Leningrad. The group’s
members included Daniil Kharms and Aleksandr Vvedensky. Poets Nikolai Zabolotsky, Nikolai Oleinikov,
and Konstantin Vaginov became closely associated
with the group as well. Oberiu originated as a literary
organization through the efforts of Kharms and Vvedensky to unite the avant-garde groups in Leningrad.
A manifesto published before their first public gathering expressed opposition to the restrictions on experimentation imposed by the Soviet regime on the
painters Pavel Filonov and Kazimir Malevich.
Contrasting themselves with the Futurists, the
Oberiu poets advocated greater concreteness in
poetry. Their interest in revealing the underlying,
essential reality of objects in the physical world resembled the concerns of contemporary literary and artistic movements such as surrealism, which strived to
express the mechanisms of the subconscious mind,
and expressionism, which attempted to reveal the
feelings an artist or writer experiences in response to
his environment. Despite their opposition to the
Futurists, the Oberiu poets shared a penchant for
experimentation and unusual linguistic effects.
Finally categorized by the government as harmfully
out of step with Soviet ideas and goals, the Oberiu
ceased to exist after 1930. Although Kharms and Vvedensky afterward successfully supported themselves as
children’s writers, they remained nearly unknown as
poets in the Soviet Union until the 1960s when their
work began to circulate in samizdat, an underground
form of self-publishing and distribution.
While many writers embraced the new government after the downfall of the tsarist regime, others
found it impossible to adapt and chose to emigrate.
Some writers did not survive the years of revolution,
war, famine, and disease. The Bolshevik government
arrested and executed Acmeist poet Nikolai Gumilev
in 1921 as an enemy of the state after he supported
the sailors who participated in the Kronstadt Uprising
against the new regime. His poetry remained unpublished in the Soviet Union until the late 1980s. His
wife, Anna Akhmatova, remained in the Soviet Union
despite years of persecution until her death in 1966.
The Futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov suffered an
early death from malnutrition after supporting the
Bolsheviks in the Red Army. The Symbolist poet Alek-
view that VAPP had failed to support young writers or
provide guidance in conforming to the programs of
the Communist Party. Rejecting the lyric poetry
favored by some VAPP members with its emphasis on
personal experiences and emotions, the poets of the
Oktiabr’ group advocated poetic techniques that
more closely reflected the lives of the proletariat.
Oktiabr’ became the most powerful faction in
VAPP until 1926. After changing leadership, the organization in 1928 became known as the “Rossiiskaia
assotsiatsiia proletarskikh pisatelei” (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers), or RAPP; it strongly advocated the literary style of nineteenth-century Realism.
RAPP also promoted the poetry of Dem’ian Bedny as
a model for writers. Originating from a peasant background, Bedny wrote poetry that enjoyed great popularity with ordinary readers as well as with Lenin; it
successfully combined folk speech and sayings with an
enthusiastic embrace of the Revolution’s aims. Works
written by writers in response to RAPP’s program
included Aleksandr Fadeev’s novel Razgrom (The
Rout, 1927) and Mikhail Sholokhov's novel Tikhii Don
(The Quiet Don, 1928). RAPP remained the leading
proletarian organization until the formation of the
Writers’ Union in 1932. Since the Communist Party
increasingly promoted proletarian literature, RAPP
encouraged the members of other groups to join
their group in 1930.
The aesthetic approach that the members of
Pereval (The Mountain Pass) advocated represented
an attempt to create a harmonious balance between
RAPP’s reliance on the Communist Party’s guidance
and the fierce independence of the avant-garde
groups. Pereval formed as a literary group among the
writers who published their works in the journal Krasnaia nov’ (Red Virgin Soil) based in Moscow in the
winter of 1923–1924. The group’s name originated
from an essay by Aleksandr Voronsky, editor of the
journal, who predicted the flowering of Soviet literature. The group’s early members included the poets
Mikhail Golodny and Mikhail Svetlov. Eduard
Bagritsky and Andrei Platonov also contributed to
Pereval’s collections. The group’s manifesto, published in Krasnaia nov’ in 1927, included the signatures of fifty-six writers, most members of the
Communist Party or Vsesoiuznyi leninskii kommunisticheskii soiuz molodezhy (Lenin’s All-Union Communist Youth League), also known as Komsomol. The
members of Pereval characterized their aesthetic
approach as “organic realism,” based on theories
espoused by Voronsky, Dmitrii Gorbov, and Abram
Lezhnev. Identifying themselves as Marxists, these
writers believed that an artist’s works were rooted in
his social environment; therefore, each writer posxxii
DLB 359
Introduction
name in Petrograd. Pavel Irtel’ (a White Army officer
of Hungarian background), who had coedited a literary almanac titled, Nov’ (Virgin Soil), since last 1928,
founded another Tsekh poetov. The group of poets in
Latvia’s Riga who called themselves “Na struge slov”
(In the Boat of Words) also published a monthly literary journal called Mansarda (The Attic). In Finland,
Sodruzhestvo poetov (The Union of Poets) included
Vera Bulich, who later organized yet another literary
group called Svetlitsa (The Parlor). In Berlin a group
of writers established the Dom khudozhestv (The
House of Arts) in imitation of the organization with
the same name founded in Petrograd by Gor’ky to
provide assistance to writers during the years of the
Revolution and Civil War; and the two organizations
remained closely affiliated. Among the many writers’
groups in Berlin, the Klub pisatelei (Writers’ Club)
formed in 1922 and included the writers Il’ia Erenburg, Andrei Bely, and Viktor Shklovsky. In Prague,
Dostoevsky scholar Al’fred Bem organized the Skit
poetov (Hermitage of Poets) in 1922, which included
writers interested in emulating Pasternak’s and Maiakovsky’s poetry.
Conflicting attitudes toward the new Soviet
regime often resulted in fierce debates among the
émigré literary groups. Gippius sharply criticized Berdiaev’s journal Put’ (The Path) for its articles of apparent untroubled acceptance of the new Soviet
government. Gippius and Merezhkovsky also condemned the journal Versty (Milestones), issued in
Paris from 1926 to 1928, for its “politics of appeasement.” At the same time, several articles in the periodical Volia Rossii (Russia’s Will), published in Prague in
the 1920s, asserted that new literary works appearing
in the Soviet Union remained important for émigrés.
While most writers in exile remained opposed to the
new Soviet state, the émigré journalist and novelist
Mikhail Osorgin (a pseudonym of Mikhail Il’in) advocated a “spiritual” return to their homeland and even
suggested an actual return in a lecture he presented
in 1924.
The influence of Symbolism, Acmeism, and
Futurism appears in the works of both the older and
younger émigré generations, and much émigré
poetry focused nostalgically on the past. Younger writers suffered in exile perhaps more than their older
peers, since they usually arrived in their new host
countries impoverished, without a literary reputation
or a complete education. They also found that literary
journals were less open to their work than to the
products of established authors. The years between
1923 and 1939 represented an especially fruitful
period for the first wave of émigrés, especially the
older poets; it reached a climax in 1933 when Bunin,
sandr Blok died after an illness in 1921 and Valerii
Briusov died in Moscow of pneumonia in 1924.
Important centers of émigré literary life
emerged in cities as diverse as Berlin, Prague, Warsaw,
Belgrade, Helsinki, Riga, and Tallinn; but Paris
quickly became the center of Russian émigré culture.
Among the Symbolist poets, Viacheslav Ivanov immigrated to Italy in 1924; Igor’ Severianin settled in
Estonia; and Gippius, Merezhkovsky, and Bal’mont
moved to France. Poet Marina Tsvetaeva immigrated
to Berlin in 1922 to join her husband, Sergei Efron,
and the couple eventually settled in Paris. She later
returned to the Soviet Union in 1939 to meet her husband after his return there and subsequently committed suicide after her evacuation during World War II
to the city of Yelabuga in 1941. Her husband was executed a few months later in a Soviet prison.
The older writers of this first wave of Soviet
émigrés had established their literary careers in tsarist
Russia. The younger writers among them, such as
Anna Prismanova, Vera Bulich, Iurii Ivask, Alla Golovina, and Vladimir Korvin-Piotrovsky gained recognition as significant writers only after they left the Soviet
Union. Some of the more experienced, established
writers such as Gippius, Khodasevich, and Adamovich
served as mentors for these younger poets. Very active
in émigré literary life, Gippius participated in establishing journals in Paris such as Novyi dom (The New
House) and Novyi korabl’ (The New Ship), which
attracted new writers such as Nina Berberova. In Paris,
the émigré poet and prose writer Ivan Bunin organized seminars and workshops for younger poets.
Gippius and Merezhkovsky formed one of the
most active émigré literary groups in Paris in 1926,
called “Zelenaia lampa” (The Green Lamp). The
members of Il’ia Fondaminsky’s circle included the
philosopher Nikolai Berdiaev and the former Acmeist
poet Elizaveta Skobtsovy. Adamovich founded an
important literary movement in the 1920s called the
Parizhskaia nota (Parisian Note), popular among
younger poets; it advocated linguistic simplicity and
universal themes such as truth, loneliness, and death.
During these years, some poets, such as Boris
Poplavsky and Ivask, began to experiment with Western literary techniques and models.
While Paris remained a center of literary activity, other cities also hosted significant émigré literary
groups. Severianin became the best-known émigré
poet in Estonia, although not the first arrival, since
Ivask joined one of the earliest émigré literary circles
in Tallinn as early as 1896. The poet and lecturer
Boris Pravdin established the Tsekh poetov (Poets’
Guild) in 1928 at the University of Tartu, patterned
after Gumilev’s earlier Acmeist group of the same
xxiii
Introduction
DLB 359
such as the Constructivists, who presented their work
through the vehicle of mass media for the same reason. In its formulaic approach to creating literary
works, Socialist Realism also bears some similarity to
other forms of contemporary popular literature such
as romances, which Piotr Fast explores in his book Ideology, Aesthetics, Literary History: Socialist Realism and its
Others (1999).
During the period of Stalin’s leadership, hundreds of thousands fell victim to purges, and millions
of others languished in prison camps. Former Oberiu
poet Daniil Kharms died in prison in 1942 in Leningrad after his arrest in 1941. Zabolotsky was arrested
in 1938, released after almost six years, then sentenced to exile for two years before receiving permission to return. Vvedensky was arrested in 1932,
imprisoned for a short time, released, then arrested
and imprisoned again. He died a prisoner during
World War II. The poet Daniil Andreev lived only two
years after his release from prison following his arrest
in 1947, and Mandel’shtam died in prison after his
arrest in 1938.
World War II temporarily interrupted Stalin’s
ambitious plans for rapid economic growth and eradication of dissent. The war resulted in massive suffering, privations and casualties, especially in the Russian
Republic. The poet Nikolai Tikhonov asserted in a
speech before the Writers’ Union in 1945 that 300
writers had received decorations for their war service
and 140 had died in battle. During the war, the Soviet
government also relaxed the Socialist Realist guidelines, encouraging writers to adopt patriotic themes
to help rally the country to resistance. Poets such as
Boris Slutsky, Ol’ga Berggol’ts, Margarita Aliger, and
Vera Inber wrote poems of survival amidst violence,
illness, starvation, and death. The courage of both
troops and civilians during the blockade of Leningrad
by the Germans became a defining feature of the Russian resistance. Of the city’s three million inhabitants,
more than a million died from hunger, disease, and
combat between 8 September 1941 and 27 January
1944 when the Russians succeeded in breaking
through the blockade.
World War II also produced a second wave of
Soviet emigrants, largely composed of individuals who
had been deported or who had volunteered to work
in the German Reich, people residing in areas occupied by the Germans, individuals fleeing from combat
areas, and prisoners captured by the German army.
Most of the German occupied territories—the Baltic
states, Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova—contained
few ethnic Russians. According to John Glad in Russia
Abroad: Writers, History, Politics (1999), ethnic Russians
were only about 7 percent of the émigrés. Although
whose notable novel Zhizn’ Arsen’eva (1930; translated
as The Well of Days, 1933) was set in tsarist Russia, won
the Nobel Prize. The many collections of poetry published by Gippius, Tsvetaeva, Khodasevich, Adamovich, and Bunin attest to the popularity of poetry
during these years.
While many émigré writers continued to adhere
to the poetic trends dominant before their emigration, the poets who remained in the Soviet Union
faced a literary environment molded by governmental policies. As an outgrowth of the Seventeenth Conference of the Soviet Communist Party held 30
January–4 February 1932, the Communist Party’s
Central Committee on 23 April 1932 dissolved all
existing literary organizations and decreed the creation of a single Writers’ Union. They directed that a
methodology called Socialist Realism was to replace
all of the practices advocated by the earlier literary
groups. The First Convention of the Writers’ Union,
which had more than five hundred members, formulated the definition of Socialist Realism that remained
unchanged through the mid 1980s.
The Socialist Realist guidelines specified the
themes and type of characters as well as the literary
style all writers had to adopt. Writers were directed to
treat major themes such as the history of class struggle, the development of socialism, the success of collectivization, the progress of scientific and
technological advances, and the assimilation of
national minorities. Their writings might include
depictions of conflicts that arose in overcoming
destructive attitudes in society such as classism, racism, and egotism. Since the Marxist theorist Friedrich
Engels had believed that characters depicted by nineteenth-century Realist writers best typified the historical progress of the class struggle toward socialism, the
conflicts of a “typical hero” also became a distinguishing characteristic of Socialist Realism. Partiinost’
(Party-mindedness), an idea inferred from a statement once made by Lenin, expressed the importance
of reflecting the Communist Party’s current policies.
Another key idea of Socialist Realism was narodnost’—which referred to the depiction in a work of
popular rather than elite culture.
Despite the apparent dissimilarity between the
Socialist Realist guidelines and the diverse methodologies espoused by the avant-garde groups, the art historian and critic Boris Groys asserted in his essay in
the book Laboratory of Dreams: The Russian Avant-Garde
and Cultural Experiment (1996) that Socialist Realism
can be termed, “a continuation of avant-garde strategy by different means.” By striving to erode the
boundaries between elite and popular culture, Socialist Realism shared the aims of avant-garde groups
xxiv
DLB 359
Introduction
sandr Tvardovsky lost his position as editor in chief of
the journal Novyi mir (The New World) in 1954 for his
encouragement of greater literary experimentation.
After regaining his position in 1958, he continued to
mold the journal into a vehicle for presenting realistic
depictions of Soviet life. The Hungarian Uprising in
1956 and revolt in Poland the same year provoked
another period of government crackdown. Boris Pasternak fell victim to the more repressive atmosphere
after Il Dottor Zivago, an Italian translation of his novel
Doktor Zhivago (1958; translated as Doctor Zhivago,
1958), was published in Milan the year before it
appeared in Russian. After he was nominated to win
the Nobel Prize, he was pressured into declining the
award. He then was expelled from the Writers’
Union.
The Thaw also produced a rich underground
avant-garde movement. The Lianozovo group, named
for a northern Moscow suburb that became an unofficial center for the artistic and poetic avant-garde
beginning in the late 1950s, included among its members the poets Evgenii Kropivnitsky, Genrikh Sapgir,
Ian Satunovsky, Igor’ Kholin, and the youngest of
them in his early twenties, Vsevolod Nekrasov.
Although these poets were stylistically diverse, many
of them chose to meld a grotesque absurdism with
depictions of the harsh environment of the poorest
segments of society. During this time, the poet Leonid
Chertkov also established an important association of
poets in Moscow in the 1950s called Chertkov’s
Group.
An avant-garde underground also appeared in
Leningrad. The literary circle of Mikhail Krasil’nikov
formed in the mid 1950s and included the poets
Mikhail Eremin, Lev Loseff, and Vladimir Ufliand
among its members. The poets Gleb Gorbovsky, Aleksandr Kushner, and Viktor Sosnora attended Gleb
Semenov’s Literaturnoe ob” edinenie (Literary association), or LITO, at the Leningrad Mining Academy
in the 1950s. Usually led by a member of the Writers’
Union, some of the LITOs became well known as
important incubators for aspiring young writers. The
poets Dmitrii Bobyshev, Joseph Brodsky, Anatolii
Naiman, and Evgenii Rein, who in the late 1950s had
formed a literary group in Leningrad around Akhmatova known as the “Volshebnyi khor” (Magic Choir)
and “Akhmatovskie siroty” (Akhmatova’s Orphans),
began to establish their reputations as significant writers in the early 1960s. The 1963 arrest of Brodsky, heralded as the most talented poet of his generation by
Akhmatova, followed by his trial and imprisonment,
marked an inauspicious ending to the Thaw.
A stricter regulation of literature and the
respectful rehabilitation of Stalin’s memory character-
poets such as Ivan Elagin and Dmitrii Klenovsky as
well as other intellectuals emigrated during this
period, their numbers proved too small to create a
broad cultural base in their host countries similar to
the first wave of emigrants. They also differed from
the first wave of emigrants because they emigrated
after the Soviet Union had become a well-established
state. As a result, the second-wave émigré writers often
identified themselves more easily as Soviet writers. In
1958 a group of second-wave writers published an
anthology in Munich, Literaturnoe zarubezh’e (Literature Abroad), which included an afterword by Iurii
Bol’shukhin that defined modern Russian literature as a combination of modern Soviet literature
and second-wave émigré literature.
A period of greater openness in Soviet society
followed Stalin’s death in 1953. Deriving its name
from Il’ia Erenburg’s novel Ottepel’ (1954; translated
as The Thaw, 1955), this period coincided with the
regime of Nikita Khrushchev from 1953 until 1964.
Khrushchev consolidated his power by blaming Stalin
for the problems of Soviet society while tolerating
more freedom than his predecessor. While the methodology of Socialist Realism remained unchanged
during the Thaw, writers were allowed to publish
works that addressed the formerly forbidden themes
of Stalin’s purges and prison camps. Vladimir Dudintsev’s novel Ne khlebom edinym (1957; translated as Not
By Bread Alone, 1957) openly criticized the officially
proclaimed superiority of collectivism over the rights
and needs of the individual. During this time, Berggol’ts tentatively campaigned for greater diversity in
Soviet literature and the relaxation of the Socialist
Realist guidelines.
Poetry particularly flourished during the Thaw.
Huge stadium-sized poetry readings continued for
hours and featured poets such as Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Andrei Voznesensky, Vladimir Vyosotsky, and
Bulat Okudzhava. Newer poets, such as Vasilii Aksenov (Aksyonov), Aleksandr Kushner, and Andreii
Bitov, also began to publish their works. In the more
relaxed atmosphere, many poets tentatively returned
to experimenting with form and technique. While
Aksenov successfully incorporated slang and colloquialisms into his poetry, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn introduced prison slang into prose works such as his
novella, Odin den’ Ivana Denisovicha (1963; translated
as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, 1962). During
this time, the poet Evgeny Vinokurov helped to establish the reputation of formerly repressed writers, such
as Zabolotsky and Leonid Martynov, and also introduced new poets, such as Bella Akhmadulina.
Periods of government reaction and repression
continued to occur during the Thaw. The poet Alekxxv
Introduction
DLB 359
ment, which included Aleksandr Galich and Vladimir
Vysotsky. Although Okudzhava started his career as a
poet, he achieved even greater fame once he transformed his poems into songs. Galich became well
known as a playwright from 1954 until 1960 before his
poetry and songs criticizing Stalin’s prison camps and
repression ended his professional career in the late
1960s. Vysotsky enjoyed a successful stage and film
career as an actor. His songs of political repression
and resistance particularly established his reputation
in the Soviet Union and abroad.
One of the most notorious episodes of government repression during the Brezhnev period
occurred in 1978, after a group of artists and writers
produced a few copies of a samizdat anthology titled
Metropol’: Literaturnyi al’manakh (Metropol: A Literary
Almanac), edited by Aksenov and Bitov and others.
Featuring works with sexual and other unsanctioned
themes, the volume included work by some twentyfive writers, including Akhmadulina and Sapgir. Government retaliation resulted in the end of the official
careers of many of the participants. A protégé of Eduard Bagritsky in the 1920s, Semen Lipkin, one of the
contributors, relinquished his membership in the
Writers’ Union in protest. He and his wife, the poet
Inna Lisnianskaia, subsequently were prevented from
publishing their poetry officially in the Soviet Union.
Aksenov’s citizenship was revoked, and he immigrated in 1979 to the United States.
Another example of an expanding literary
underground, the Moscow Conceptualist circle
formed in the 1970s and included poets such as Il’ia
Kabakov, Dmitrii Prigov, Lev Rubinshtein, and Nekrasov. The group was influenced by Soviet artists in Moscow who—inspired in part by the American Pop Arts
movement that subverted advertising images in artworks—had developed the “Sots-Art” movement in
the 1960s to comment on the discordance between
Soviet cultural images and the reality experienced by
Soviet citizens. The Conceptualist writers and artists
mocked official Soviet clichés and slogans as well as
pre-Revolutionary Russian culture in their works. Critics have compared their stylistic techniques to those
found in the works of the Lianozovo poets as well as
the unofficial poetry written much earlier by Nikolai
Glazkov in the 1930s and 1940s.
Many of the poets affiliated with the underground literary groups in Moscow experimented with
the new poetic techniques of the international Postmodernist movement. The group Moskovskoe vremia
(Moscow Time) further elaborated the Acmeist poetics of Akhmatova in the 1970s and attracted poets
such as Sergei Gandlevsky, Bakhyt Kenzheev, and
Aleksei Tsvetkov. Samoe molodoe obshchestvo geniev
ized the “period of stagnation” of Leonid Brezhnev’s
regime, which lasted from 1964 until his death in
1982. The trial of the prose writer Andrei Siniavsky and the poet and prose writer Iulii Daniel’ in
1966 for publishing their works under pseudonyms
abroad cast an ominous cloud over the early years of
Brezhnev’s leadership. The subsequent trials of Aleksandr Ginzburg, the journalist and editor of the
underground journal Sintaksis (Syntax), as well as the
prosecution of such writers as Iurii Galanskov and
Vladimir Bukovsky for publishing unsanctioned works
through samizdat—an evolving system of circulating
self-published typescripts—added to the atmosphere
of repression. Such actions stimulated the growth of
an internal dissident movement and led to the significant increase of works promulgated through samizdat
or tamizdat—those smuggled outside the country for
publication. In 1968 the Soviet government invaded
Czechoslovakia with several hundred thousand Warsaw Pact troops to reestablish stricter government
control there, provoking protests in Moscow, in which
poet Natal’ia Gorbanevskaia participated. Of the
members of the Writers’ Union, only Yevtushenko
publicly protested the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Despite increasing government control over
public expression, many writers successfully continued to publish their literary works in the official press.
Arsenii Tarkovsky, a longtime translator whose career
as a poet began in the 1950s, published his most
important collections throughout the 1960s. Poetry
that emphasized personal themes also successfully
avoided government censure in the 1960s and 1970s
largely because it deviated only slightly from Socialist
Realist norms. Writers of the so-called village prose,
including Valentin Rasputin, Viktor Astafiev, Vasilii
Shukshin, and Vasilii Belov, achieved prominence
through their sympathetic depictions of the traditional values, ways of life, and problems of the peasants. The major achievements of the Brezhnev era in
prose included Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master i Margarita
(translated as The Master and Margarita, 1967)—a
novel written during Stalin’s time that made a surprising appearance in the journal Moskva (Moscow) in
1966–1967. In London, Siniavsky, who emigrated
from the U.S.S.R. in 1973, published Progulki s Pushkinym (1975; translated as Strolls with Pushkin, 1993), a
novel he wrote during his confinement in a prison
camp in 1966–1968, under the pseudonym Abram
Tertz. Another important novel published abroad was
Venedikt Erofeev’s Moskva-Petushki (1977; translated
as Moscow to the End of the Line, 1980).
A vibrant and popular movement of poet-singers
also emerged during Brezhnev’s regime. The poet
Bulat Okudzhava became the father of the movexxvi
DLB 359
Introduction
(1984–1985)—Mikhail Gorbachev became the last
head of the Soviet Union in 1985. His initiation of a
new period of openness in Soviet society led to an
unsuccessful coup against him in August 1991, which
at the end of that year was followed by the sudden
breakup of the U.S.S.R. Gorbachev initially sought to
improve economic conditions in the country by
effecting a closer relationship with the rest of Europe
through his economic policy of perestroika, or
restructuring. He also established a policy of glasnost’,
or greater political openness, which resulted in a
reevaluation of the past purges, oppression, and
restrictions under Stalin, Brezhnev, and Chernenko.
Although the government relaxed some of its strict
regulation of literature, the penalties for circulating
literary works unofficially by samizdat or publishing in
the West remained stiff. At the same time, previously
repressed or expurgated works were freely published
in the Soviet Union for the first time, including Zamiatin’s anti-utopian novel My (translated as We, 1924);
Akhmatova’s long poem Rekviem (translated as
Requiem, 1976), written 1935–1940 to witness the
oppression during Stalin’s regime; and Pasternak’s
Doktor Zhivago.
During Gorbachev’s reign, the works of the
émigré poets Aksenov and Brodsky also were published in the Soviet Union for the first time. Other
important literary works that became openly available
were Anatolii Rybakov’s Deti Arbata (1987; translated
as Children of the Arbat, 1988), a novel indicting Stalin’s
times, and Vladimir Voinovich’s Zhizn’ i neobyknovennye
prikliucheniia soldata Ivana Chonkina (translated as The
Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan
Chonkin, 1977), first published in Paris in 1975, and
which appeared in print in the U.S.S.R. in 1990.
These modern classics, among others published for
the first time in the Soviet Union after being banned
for years, became known as “vosvrascchennaia literatura” (returned literature).
The literary trends that evolved into Russian
Postmodernism burst into the open in the late 1980s.
Contributors to leading journals clashed about the
form and function of poetry. The more conservative
serials, such as Nash sovremennnik (Our Contemporary), Literaturnaia Rossiia (Literary Russia), Pravda
(Truth), and Molodaia gvardiia (The Young Guard), as
well as some older poets, resisted the emergence of a
new generation of younger poets, whose work seemed
unfamiliar and Western, while evincing a greater
degree of technical experimentation and less civic
consciousness than their predecessors’ poetry. Since
most of this new tradition of poetry had developed
outside the public discourse in the 1960s and 1970s in
samizdat or tamizdat, there ensued a journalistic
(The Youngest Society of Geniuses), or SMOG,
appeared in 1965 with the writer Sasha Sokolov
among its members. The playwright, poet, and prose
writer Evgenii Kharitonov articulated the experience
of gays and helped to establish a movement of underground gay culture during the 1970s.
In the Leningrad underground Arkadii Dragomoshchenko served as one of the founders of the literary group Klub-81 (Club-81), which existed from
1981 to 1988. Elena Shvarts established her own
group in 1975 called Shimpozium, which continued
to meet mainly at her apartment until 1982. The poet,
songwriter and artist Aleksei Khvostenko and the poet
Anri Volokhonsky belonged to the group Verpa (The
Kedge Anchor), which formed in 1963 and published
its second collection in 1985. The Leningrad underground produced a wide variety of samizdat publications, including 37 (1975–1981), edited by Viktor
Krivulin; Chasy (Hours or the Clock, 1976–1990);
Severnaia pochta (The Northern Post, 1979–1981),
coedited by Krivulin; and Mitin zhurnal (Mitia’s Journal, 1985–2001), edited by Dmitrii Volchek.
The United States became a major destination
for the poets who emigrated from the Soviet Union in
a third wave beginning in the 1970s. Unlike the first
and second waves, the third-wave émigrés, many of
them Jewish, left the Soviet Union voluntarily.
Although Jews had participated in establishing the
Soviet Union, and Lenin’s public condemnations of
anti-Semitism had led some to believe in the possibility of reform, Jewish writers became a special target of
Stalin’s purges. In 1950, provoked by anti-Semitism in
the U.S.S.R., Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben
Gurion, began to pressure Soviet authorities to permit Jewish emigration. The popular movement that
grew up over a period of years inside the country to
pressure the Soviet authorities to permit the emigration of Jews finally proved successful.
Although persecution drove some to leave the
Soviet Union, most of the third wave of émigrés generally lacked the extreme degree of antagonism
toward the Soviet state typical of the first wave of emigrants. While first-wave émigrés had enjoyed more
opportunities to travel and to experience other cultural traditions before emigrating, third- wave emigrants had experienced life mainly, if not wholly,
within the Soviet Union. The third wave of émigrés
included the poets Dmitrii Bobyshev, who left the
Soviet Union in 1979; Joseph Brodsky, who emigrated
in 1972; and Lev Loseff, who came to the United
States in 1976. Anri Volokhonsky immigrated to Israel
in 1973, then to Germany in 1985.
Following two leaders who served briefly—Yuri
Andropov (1982–1984) and Konstantin Chernenko
xxvii
Introduction
DLB 359
leaders of Belarus and Ukraine met in Minsk to create
the “Sodruzhestvo nezavisimykh gosudarstv” (Commonwealth of Independent States) and annulled the
treaty that had established the Soviet Union. The
other republics—except the three Baltic republics,
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—joined later. On 25
December 1991 the Soviet Union formally ceased to
exist.
The influence of the diverse Postmodernist
poetic trends that emerged from the underground in
the late 1980s continued to flower in the 1990s. At the
same time, in the years following the breakup of the
Soviet Union some émigré writers returned, undermining and confounding fixed conceptions of the
separate identity of émigré poetry. While the Soviet
Union dissolved in 1991, the legacy of Russian poetry
written during the Soviet period has just begun to be
examined. As seen through the retrospective light
created by the formation of the Russian Federation,
Soviet official poets, underground poets, and émigré
poets now share an unmistakable new common identity and heritage within the pantheon of Russian literature.
—Karen Rosneck
debate about the new poetry, its complexities and
what some considered its incomprehensibility. Some
journals published special issues that officially introduced many previously repressed writers for the first
time. The works first written by early Conceptualist
poets during the Thaw finally became part of a wider,
more public literary scene.
The diverse range of poetic styles and techniques, classified variously by critics such as Mikhail
Epshtein and Boris Groys, included frequent wordplay, a high degree of subjectivity, and complex technical experimentation. Poets who formerly had
published their work mainly or solely in samizdat or
tamizdat, including Gennadii Aigi, Olga Sedakova,
and Elena Shvarts, began to publish their poetry in
the official press, accompanied by a new generation
of younger poets born around 1950 and later, including Ivan Zhdanov, Aleksei Parshchikov, Nina
Iskrenko, Aleksandr Eremenko, Timur Kibirov, and
Vladimir Sorokin. The appearance of new anthologies sparked readers’ interest in women writers and
helped boost writers such as Tatyana Tolstaya, Liudmila Petrushevskaia, and Valeriia Narbikova to prominence.
Many of the Communist Party’s most conservative members opposed Gorbachev’s efforts to relax
centralized governmental control and especially disapproved of his decision to grant the Soviet republics
greater independence through the establishment of a
federation with their own president, military, and foreign policy. The leaders of the republics had planned
to meet on 20 August 1991 to sign a new treaty to
enact these measures. On 19 August 1991, however, a
group called the “Gosudarstvennyi komitet po chrezvychainomu polozheniiu” (The State Emergency
Committee) attempted to seize power in Moscow in
an attempted coup and held Gorbachev under house
arrest outside the city. Hundreds staged public demonstrations against the coup, joined dramatically in
Moscow by the Russian Republic’s president Boris
Yeltsin. After the coup’s failure and Gorbachev’s
return to Moscow, some of the institutions within the
government began to falter. In response, Yeltsin took
control of key governmental agencies, banning the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union as well as the
Communist Party of the Russian Republic.
In the void left by the Communist Party’s influence, the Soviet Union began to collapse. By December 1991, all of the republics had declared
independence. Although many of the other republics
favored the creation of a federation, Yeltsin resisted
this option, fearing that the Russian Republic would
inevitably bear the economic burden for the other
poorer states. Instead, on 8 December, Yeltsin and the
Note on Dates, Names, and Transliteration
Following the Bolshevik takeover of 1917, Russia’s Soviet rulers decided that Russia would abide
henceforth by the Gregorian calendar (New Style)
rather than the Julian calendar (Old Style) in use
until then. This shift entailed a one time loss of 13
days in the Russian calendar: accordingly, 31 January
1918 was followed by 14 February 1918. All dates in
this volume appear according to the calendar in use
in Russia at the time. To convert from the Julian calendar (Old Style) to the Gregorian calendar (New
Style), add twelve days for dates in the nineteenth
century and thirteen days for pre-1918 dates in the
twentieth century.
Russian names, titles, and quotations are transliterated according to the standard Library of Congress transliteration system (without diacritics, but
preserving hard and soft signs), with the following
exceptions. Surnames with the adjectival ending -yi or
-ii are changed to -y, and surnames with the adjectival
ending in -oi are changed to -oy. This exception will be
seen most frequently in the ending -sky (rather than skii). Tsars are given anglicized names (Alexander,
Nicholas); Gogol appears without his final soft sign;
and Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky appear in
their commonly accepted forms. Moscow and St.
Petersburg are given their English names. Books published in St. Petersburg during the twentieth century
use the name for the city in place at time of publicaxxviii
DLB 359
Introduction
University of South Carolina: Elizabeth Sudduth and
the rare-book department; circulation department
head Tucker Taylor; reference department head Virginia W. Weathers; reference department staff Marilee Birchfield, Karen Brown, Mary Bull, Gerri Corson,
Joshua Garris, Beki Gettys, Laura Ladwig, Tom Marcil,
Bob Skinder, and Sharon Verba; interlibrary loan
department head Marna Hostetler; and interlibrary
loan staff Robert Amerson and Timothy Simmons.
tion (St. Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad, St. Petersburg), except in those cases when publishers used a
name (generally Petersburg) no longer officially accurate; where possible, in such cases we have followed
the publishers’ usage.
Acknowledgments
This book was produced by Bruccoli Clark Layman, Inc. George Parker Anderson was the in-house
editor. Editorial assistants were Abraham R. Layman
and Khrystyna Zh. Layman.
Senior editor is Philip B. Dematteis.
Production manager is Janet E. Hill.
Administrative support was provided by Carol A.
Cheschi.
Accountant is Ann-Marie Holland.
Copyediting supervisor is Phyllis A. Avant. The
copyediting staff includes Eileen Newman.
Pipeline manager is James F. Tidd Jr.
Permissions editor is Dickson Monk.
Office manager is Kathy Lawler Merlette.
Digital photographic copy work and photo editing was performed by Dickson Monk.
Systems manager is James Sellers.
The typesetting and graphics department
includes Kathleen M. Flanagan and Patricia M. Flanagan.
Library research was facilitated by the following
librarians at the Thomas Cooper Library of the
The editor of DLB 359: Russian Poets of the Soviet
Era thanks the Russian series editors, J. Alexander
Ogden and Judith Kalb, who provided much valuable
assistance in shaping this volume, especially in its initial stages. The editor additionally is grateful to Professor André de Korvin (University of Houston) for
his assistance in providing relevant illustrations for
the volume as well as for providing many colorful
memories of his father, Vladimir Korvin-Piotrovsky.
Gleb Sadikov-Lansere, compiler of Daniil Andreev: Pro
et Contra (St. Petersburg: RkhGA, 2010), generously
and kindly assisted Alexei Bogdanov in updating the
bibliographical sections of his entry on Andreev with
many valuable recent citations. In addition, the editor
wishes to thank the staff of the libraries of the University of Wisconsin-Madison for helpfully providing
illustrations from its extensive collections. Finally, the
editor would like to express an especially heartfelt
thanks to the contributors, who weathered many frustrations and unforeseen difficulties over a lengthy
period of time to see this volume in print.
xxix