Literature, history and identity in post-soviet Russia, 1991 - 2006

This book analyses the relationship between literature, history and politics in post-Soviet Russia. It explores the impact of the collapse of the USSR on Russian literature and culture and the changing content and reception of fiction on historical themes under Presidents Yeltsin and Putin. It discusses the value of various theoretical concepts, such as postmodernism, trauma, nostalgia, and the notion of discourse as power, in analysing post-Soviet historical fiction. The book shows that Russian society’s confrontation with its past has remained one of the main themes of Russian culture during the period 1991-2006. Notwithstanding the gradual decline of the literature of sensational disclosure associated with Gorbachev’s perestroika , a more oblique investigation of many aspects of Russian and Soviet history and an interest in the philosophy of history have continued to be significant preoccupations of post-Soviet culture. Individual and family history continue to be explored in memoirs and autobiographical writings, while the history and destiny of Russia have been passionately debated in literary journals and the media, as Russians search for a new ‘national idea’ to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of communism. This study suggests that there is a remarkable continuity between post-Soviet literature and pre-revolutionary Russian literature and thought.