Russian literature rivals other national literatures in critical esteem, a position it has achieved primarily through works written since 1820. Russians honor the poet Aleksandr \TPushkin\t, who died in 1837, above all other writers; but it was through the great mid-19th-century masters of prose fiction--especially Fyodor \TDostoyevsky\t, Leo \TTolstoi\t, and Ivan \TTurgenev\t--that Russian literature first gained the attention of foreign readers. Among later authors the short-story writer and dramatist Anton \TChekhov\t is the most admired. Of writers since the 1917 Revolution, the most widely read are Boris \TPasternak\t--important for both his fiction and his poetry--and the novelists Mikhail \TSholokhov\t and Aleksandr \TSolzhenitsyn\t. Origins Russian literature began with the conversion of Russia to Christianity in the late 10th century. As Kiev at this time was the capital and most important city of Russia, early literature is said to belong to the Kievan period. Most of the early literature was religious and was written in Old Church Slavonic (see \TSlavic languages\t)--a language of the Balkan Slavs, akin to the Russian vernacular, that the Russians adopted for use in the church. Written literature consisted at first of biblical and liturgical texts, as well as some medieval romances translated from the Greek. Original Kievan writings include the sermons of Hilarion, lives of the saints, and the historical works known as the chronicles, of which the best known is the Primary Chronicle (c.1112). Written in the vernacular and compiled by monks, the chronicles form a valuable historical record and are also the most significant early Russian literary genre. The most famous work of the period, however, is the short epic The Lay of Igor's Campaign (1187), evoking conditions in Russia at the time. In the Kievan period, Russia also possessed a rich oral literature. The byliny, or folk chants, were heroic lays in which the 10th-century Grand Prince Vladimir of Kiev figures in a role comparable to that of King Arthur in Arthurian legend. Retold and reworked over the centuries, the byliny survived in oral form into the 19th century, when they, as well as traditional folktales and religious lays, were finally transcribed. Muscovite Period From about 1240 to 1480, Russia's princes ruled as vassals of the Tatars. During this period, in which the ascendancy of Moscow occurred, literature remained largely religious, didactic, and historical, with continuing emphasis on lives of the saints and on chronicles. One well-known work of the time, the Zadonshchina, is a 15th-century account of the Russians' first major victory over the Tatars at Kulikovo in 1380. The two most celebrated monuments of 16th-century Russian literature are a handbook of domestic etiquette, the Domostroy, and the acrimonious Correspondence between Prince A. M. Kurbsky and Tsar Ivan IV (1564-79; Eng. trans., 1955). During the 17th century a schism occurred in the church, from which arose the polemical autobiography Life of the Archpriest Avvakum (1672-75; Eng. trans., 1924) by the leader of the Old Believers. Russian drama also first appeared during the 17th century, in the works translated and staged for the tsar by the German monk Johann Gottfried Gregori and in the original works of Simeon Polotsky (1629-80). The 18th Century With the advent of the 18th century, led by Tsar Peter the Great (r. 1682-1725), Russia came under the influence of the culturally as well as economically more advanced civilization of Western Europe. Russian writers, struggling to create a literature comparable to that found abroad, felt hampered by the undeveloped condition of their language. A burst of literary activity ensued, involving literary imitation and linguistic experiments. Antioch Kantemir (1709-44) was the first poet to write in the vernacular; his "On the Detractors of Learning, to My Mind" (1729; Eng. trans., 1749) brought him to the attention of influential social reformers. Poet, scholar, and scientist Mikhail \TLomonosov\t played a particularly prominent part in standardizing the colloquial language, proposing three distinct literary styles. Gavrila \TDerzhavin\t, the most important poetic predecessor of Pushkin, wrote vital yet majestic poetry, characterized by baroque imagery. Nikolai \TKaramzin\t helped forge the modern cultural language with his sentimental Letters of a Russian Traveler (1790; Eng. trans., 1803) and with his chief work, the 11-volume Istoriya gosudarstva rossiyskogo (History of the Russian State, 1804-27). Ivan \TKrylov\t, Russia's greatest fabulist, also wrote at this time. For the stage, Aleksandr SUMAROKOV produced the tragedy Demetrius the Impostor (1781; Eng. trans., 1806) and several minor comedies; and Denis \TFonvizin\t is noted for two comedies of manners, The Brigadier (1766; Eng. trans., 1916) and The Young Hopeful (1782; Eng. trans., 1933). By now Russia had acquired a new literary center, Saint Petersburg, the imperial capital since 1712. Pushkin and His Immediate Successors In the 19th century, Russia's greatest literary genius, Aleksandr Pushkin, completed the process of adapting the language as a literary vehicle. His greatest poems include the verse novel Eugene Onegin (1823-31; Eng. trans., 1881); The Bronze Horseman (1832; Eng. trans., 1931), a collection of folktales; the verse play \TBoris Godunov\t; and a wealth of lyrics notable for their precise, imagistic style. His best-known prose works are the novel A Captain's Daughter (1836; Eng. trans., 1846), the tale The Queen of Spades (1833; Eng. trans., 1850), and a collection of five short stories, The Tales of Belkin (1830; Eng. trans., 1894). Pushkin's prolific career ended early when he died in a duel at the age of 38. Another significant writer at the time of Pushkin was the playwright Aleksandr \TGriboyedov\t, whose fame rests on the comedy Woe from Wit (1823; Eng. trans., 1857). Two successors of Pushkin were the nature poet Fyodor Tyutchev and the romantic Mikhail \TLermontov\t, whose works deal with frustration and isolation. When Lermontov died, also in a duel, at the age of 26, he left an impressive collection of lyrics and longer poems, as well as A HERO \TOf\t OUR TIME, Russia's first psychological novel. After Pushkin, emphasis began to shift from poetry to prose. Nikolai \TGogol\t, who moved from romanticism to realism, was an inspired and eccentric talent. He is best known for such historical short stories as "Taras Bulba" (1835; Eng. trans., 1860), about Cossack life; for the satire The \TInspector General\t; for the remarkable novel \TDead Souls\t; and for his Saint Petersburg tales, among which "The Overcoat" (1842; Eng. trans., 1922) is preeminent. Realism Although it had produced several powerful original talents, Russia in the 1840s still lacked a general literary movement. The extremely influential literary critic Vissarion \TBelinsky\t sought to remedy the deficiency, insisting that art had a duty to society, that it must reflect reality, and that it must have a message. Under his tutelage a movement satisfying these criteria began in the mid-1840s. At first termed the natural school, after Belinsky's death the movement developed into the so-called realist school. The general characteristics of 19th-century Russian realism include the urge to explore the human condition in a spirit of serious enquiry, although without excluding humor and satire; the tendency to set works of fiction in the Russia of the writer's own day; the cultivation of a straightforward style, but one also involving factual detail; an emphasis on character and atmosphere rather than on plot and action; and an underlying tolerance of human weakness and wickedness. The leading realists began to be published in the late 1840s--the novelists Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Count Leo Tolstoi; the playwright Aleksandr \TOstrovsky\t; the poet Nikolai \TNekrasov\t; and the novelist and political thinker Aleksandr \THerzen\t. Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoi Turgenev is renowned for his Sportsman's Sketches (1847-52; Eng. trans., 1855), sympathetically describing serf life; for his short love stories; and above all for a sequence of six novels, including \TFathers and Sons\t, in which he ventilated all the major political, social, and philosophical controversies of his day. Dostoyevsky's major works are four long novels--The \TBrothers\t KARAMOZOV, \TCrime and Punishment\t, The \TIdiot\t, and The \TPossessed\t--which present a clash between the mind and the heart, or between rationality, which Dostoyevsky detested, and intuitiveness, in which he discerned (especially in its religious manifestations) the only hope of rescuing Russia and the world from their self-inflicted troubles. Tolstoi's masterpieces, the long novels \TAnna Karenina\t and \TWar and Peace\t, also weave religious and philosophical problems into the fabric of the fiction. Chekhov and Gorky A reformer of the theater, and author of short stories and plays, Anton Chekhov wrote toward the end of the Russian realist movement. He was perhaps Russia's greatest dramatist; his plays of human isolation and despair continue to be performed throughout the world. Best known are his \TUncle Vanya\t, The \TThree Sisters\t, and The \TCherry Orchard\t. A contemporary of Chekhov, the playwright, novelist, and story writer Maksim \TGorky\t wrote his most famous play, The \Tlower\t \Ldepth\ls, at the turn of the century. Gorky's communist sympathies enabled him to enjoy certain privileges after the revolution. Symbolism and Other, Competing Movements From the mid-1890s, symbolism began to supersede realism as the dominant literary movement. The symbolists advocated creative experiment with poetic language and helped restore both craftsmanship and mystery to literature. The most famous of the Russian symbolist poets was Aleksandr \TBlok\t, who survived the revolution to write descriptions of it in the well-known poems published under the title The Twelve (1917; Eng. trans., 1920). Other leading symbolist poets were Valery \TBryusov\t, Konstantin \TBalmont\t, and Andrei \TBely\t. Meanwhile other movements arose in opposition to symbolism. The futurist poets Vladimir \TMayakovsky\t and Velimir Khlebnikov (1885-1922) sought to invent new poetic forms and scorned the art of the past. The acmeists valued the classical and European tradition, leading representatives of the movement being Nikolai \TGumilev\t, Osip \TMandelstam\t, and Anna \TAkhmatova\t. Another group, the imagists, stressed the supreme importance of poetic imagery; this movement produced only one major poet, Sergei \TYesenin\t. The Soviet Period and Socialist Realism The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 marked the beginning of the Soviet period in literature. Literature became subordinated to politics. For about a decade writers were prevented from publishing any so-called counterrevolutionary material, but they were not instructed by politicians what and how to write. By the time Joseph Stalin had come to power, however, the situation had changed. From about 1930 on, authors were required to idealize the new Soviet industrialization program and the collectivization of agriculture. In order to intensify the regimentation of literature, the many competing literary groups of the 1920s were amalgamated into a single association, the Union of Writers of the \TUSSR\t, established in 1934 under the sponsorship of literature's best-known survivor from the prerevolutionary era, Maksim Gorky. At the same time, the newly evolved aesthetic method, socialist realism, was imposed as the only permissible literary technique. According to the government, socialist realism demanded from the artist "a truthful, historically concrete depiction of reality in its revolutionary development." In practice, socialist realism imposed on literature a simple, uniform style and an abstention from stylistic or structural experiment, together with the insistence that authors show only positive aspects of the Soviet system and the beneficence of the Communist party. But several important writers had begun publishing before the crackdown of 1934 and continued to enjoy some immunity from the strictures of socialist realism. Valentin \TKatayev\t's Time Forward (1932; Eng. trans., 1933) is a carefully written account of the work of Russian technicians at Magnitogorsk; the three-volume And Quiet Flows the Don (1928-33; Eng. trans., 1934), along with its sequel, The Don Flows Home to the Sea (1940; Eng. trans., 1940), by the Nobel Prize winner Mikhail Sholokhov, is a regional novel set in Cossack lands; and Leonid \TLeonov\t's six novels on industrialization include the internationally acclaimed Sot (1930; trans. as Soviet River, 1932) and The Russian Forest (1954; Eng. trans., 1966). Such leading 20th-century exponents as Konstantin \TFedin\t and Aleksei N. \TTolstoi\t have also helped keep the long novel an established genre in Russia. Emigre and Post-Stalinist Literature The foremost expatriate prose writers of the Soviet period were Vladimir \TNabokov\t and Ivan \TBunin\t. After 1940, Nabokov wrote primarily in English, developing into an American rather than a Russian writer. Bunin, however, who had emigrated in 1919, continued to write in his native language and on Russian themes. In 1933 he became the first Russian to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. Following Stalin's death in 1953, restrictions on literature were somewhat relaxed. For a few years Ilya EHRENBERG's short novel The Thaw (1953; Eng. trans., 1966) epitomized this new official liberality. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel \TOne Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich\t, about the Soviet labor camps under Stalin, was published during a thaw, but his slightly later novels Cancer Ward (1968; Eng. trans., 1968-69), The First Circle (1968; Eng. trans., 1968), August 1914 (1971; Eng. trans., 1972), and The \TGulag Archipelago\t had to be published abroad. Solzhenitsyn was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize for literature. Boris Pasternak, offered the 1958 Prize for his works, including \TDoctor Zhivago\t, published outside the \TUSSR\t, was forced by his government to decline the award. Poetry, Drama, and Criticism Verse is in many ways a more important branch of the modern literature than prose, largely owing to leading poets who survived the revolution and continued writing either in Russia or abroad. Such poets include Mayakovsky, Mandelstam, Akhmatova, Pasternak, and Marina Tsvetayeva (1892-1941). The poets Andrei \TVoznesensky\t and Yevgeny \TYevtushenko\t produced their best work as critics of the Soviet regime in the 1960s; dissident poet Joseph \TBrodsky\t was exiled in 1972. With glasnost, the liberalization of the late 1980s, Soviet readers began to catch up on the works of their suppressed writers, including those who had died (Mikhail \TBulgakov\t, Boris Pasternak) those who were exiled (Vasily \TAksenov\t, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vladimir \TVoinovich\t), and those who stayed in the \TUSSR\t but kept their best work hidden--notably Anatoly Ryabkov, author of the anti-Stalinist novel Children of the Arbat (1987; Eng. trans., 1988). RONALD HINGLEY Bibliography: Auty, Robert, and Obolensky, Dimitri, eds., An Introduction to Russian Language and Literature (1976); Brown, Edward J., Russian Literature since the Revolution, rev. and enl. ed. (1982); Fennell, John, and Stokes, Antony, Early Russian Literature (1974); Freeborn, Richard, The Rise of the Russian Novel (1973); Goscilo, Helena, Contemporary Stories by Russian Women (1990); Harkins, William E., Dictionary of Russian Literature (1957); Hingley, Ronald, Russian Writers and Society in the Nineteenth Century, rev. ed. (1977), and Russian Writers and Soviet Society, 1917-1978 (1979); Lord, Robert, Russian Literature (1980; repr. 1985); Luker, N., ed., Anthology of Socialist Realism (1987); Markov, Vladimir, Russian Futurism: A History (1968); Mathewson, Rufus W., The Positive Hero in Russian Literature (1975); Mirsky, Dimitrii S., A History of Russian Literature (1949); Nabokov, V., Lectures on Russian Literature (1980); Russell, R., Russian Drama of the Revolutionary Period (1988); Slonin, Marc, The Epic of Russian Literature from its Origins through Tolstoy (1950) and Soviet Russian Literature, 2d ed. (1978); Struve, Gleb, Russian Literature under Lenin and Stalin (1972); Terras, Victor, Handbook of Russian Literature (1985); Woll, J., and Treml, V., Soviet Dissident Literature: A Critical Guide (1983).