Post-Soviet literature positions itself as a standalone phenomenon, disassociated from the progressive Sixtiers, aka the Thaw writers.

Post-Soviet literature dissolved borders and swept away the division into emigrant literature and literature of the mother country.

Postmodernism in Russian literature consists in combination of opposite concepts: the sublime and the low, pathetics and mockery, the fragments and integrity.

Symbolist poetry is meant for aristocrats of the spirit. The symbol is the tool helping to break on through the veil of daily routine to the higher reality. The poet’s calling is to connect the realistic earthly world with ultramundane realms.

Yandex.ru has analyzed users’ interest in the Russian poetry and published the research results.

In some sense Lyudmila Ulitskaya is an ideal Russian writer for export. She describes usual Russian life with humanistic philosophy and universal subjects, such as life and death, memory and love. Reading such texts is part of the modern intellectual’s image.

Foreign readers’ review is an important test not only for a particular writer as such, but also for the Russian culture in general. Success or failure of domestic books abroad shows how competitive we are in respect of ideas.

The principles of conceptualism were manifested in Russian literature as well. The stereotypes that the Soviet ideology constantly “bombarded” consciousness of people with were revealed in conceptualists’ poetry, which was made emphatically detached, insensible, and mechanized.

The beginning of the Old Russian literary language is considered to coincide with the period of formation of the Kiev state— the 11th century. The Slavic language material by means of high Greek literature and culture promoted the formation of writing language.

Earlier this month we decided to explore, what books you would recommend to someone uninitiated in the Russian prose to read to start their acquaintance with the mysterious world of Russian literature. Our readers and visitors responded, and here is what they had to say...

Russian winter is not just a very cold weather with frost and snow. It is a beautiful and even romantic time, which always was an inspiration for many Russian writers, poets, artists and musicians. Their works help people to understand not only charm of Russian winter, but to get to know peculiarity of mysterious Russian soul. Today we'll proudly show you some poems about Russian winter by the best Russian poets in English translation. Enjoy!

Russian proverbs and sayings are keen winged expressions created by Russian people, or translated from ancient written sources and borrowed from literary works; they express wise ideas and thoughts in concise and witty form.

The Captain's Daughter (Kapitanskaya dochka)- historical novel written by Alexander Pushkin. It is a common knowledge that the poetry of Alexander Pushkin cannot be translated well. That’s why Pushkin is not so famous abroad as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. But there are some novels, written in prose, that are worth reading to understand the great gift of the greatest Russian national poet.

The account of Russian writers’ world-known works addressed to children and youth should be started from the first third of the 19th century.

The sparkling term Golden Age is referred to the first half, or to be more exact, the first forty years of the 19th century. This period is remarkable for an unprecedented upsurge of creativity illuminated by the genius of Alexander Pushkin. It was the poetry of the early 19th century that turned to be the impetus, which still goes on driving Russian literature forth

With the end of the 19th century “the Golden Age” of Russian literature finished giving place to a crucial stage that later went down into history under the beautiful name of the Silver Age. It engendered a great flight of Russian culture, at the same time becoming a beginning of its tragic fall down.

Mikhail Gorbachev’s assumption of office in 1985 and the following epoch of glasnost (i.e. publicity) in Soviet mass media, including press, brought about sweeping changes into Russian literature.

In the early 1960s the demand for greater freedom of artistic expression in literature and arts manifested itself with new power, especially by efforts of “the angry young men”, the most well-known of whom became poets Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko and Andrey Andreyevich Voznesensky.

Stalin’s strengthening of his dictatorship in the early 1930s predetermined total submission of literature and art. In 1932 the Central Committee ordered to dismiss all literary associations and establish a single all-national Union of Soviet Writers, which was founded two years later at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers.

The first turbulent years after 1917, when in accord with new social forces released by overthrow of autocracy there appeared numerous confronting literary groupings, were the only revolutionary period of literature development in the Soviet Union.