Search results for ""Author Mark Lipovetsky""

Book SynopsisPostmodern Crises collects previously published and yet unpublished Mark Lipovetsky's articles on Russian literature and film. Written in different years, they focus on cultural and aesthetic crises that, taken together, constitute the postmodern condition of Russian culture. The reader will find here articles about classic subversive texts (such as Nabokov's Lolita), performances (Pussy Riot), and recent, but also subversive, films. Other articles discuss such authors as Vladimir Sorokin, such sociocultural discourses as the discourse of scientific intelligentsia; post-Soviet adaptations of Socialist Realism, and contemporary trends of "complex" literature, as well as literary characters turned into cultural tropes (the Strugatsky's progressors). The book will be interesting for teachers and scholars of contemporary Russian literature and culture; it can be used both in undergraduate and graduate courses.Trade ReviewAs the leading scholar on Russian postmodernism, Lipovetsky has gathered in this volume a range of texts written over the last 20 years that address critical moments in Soviet and Russian cultural history. Whether writing on the prose of Nabokov and Sorokin, on Pussy Riot, or on the films of Loznitsa and Todorovsky, Lipovetsky offers tantalizing readings through a lens that reveals the texts' potential for fragmentation and destabilization. Lipovetsky's analysis is always profound, but this volume shows the breadth of his vision, both in the range of genres and the timescale covered." "The most authoritative and insightful expert of modern Russian literature and culture, Mark Lipovetsky suggests in his new book an original view of the main trends of development of Russian culture and a fresh interpretation of a number of key literary texts and films. For Lipovetsky, postmodern theory offers a unique point from which to meditate on the overall dynamic of modern Russian culture. This fascinating work of theoretical boldness and real imagination enables us to experience Soviet and post-Soviet values and sensibilities and will be indispensable for anyone who is interested in contemporary Russian culture." "In recent years, few scholars have transformed the fields of Russian and Slavic literary studies as rigorously as Mark Lipovetsky has. With Postmodern Crises, he unpacks the interconnections between intellectual and popular cultures and politics in contemporary Russia in a series of erudite, nuanced, nonessentialist, and—invariably!—rhetorically powerful analytical inquiries. Scholars, students, philosophers, and politicians who want to understand the crisis of postmodern paradigms, contemporary Russian literature and art, and the political crises of Putin's Russia: read this book.Table of ContentsPreface LITERATURE The War of Discourses: Lolita and the Failure of a Transcendental Project The Poetics of the ITR Discourse: In the 1960s and Today The Progressor between the Imperial and the Colonial Cycles and Continuities in Contemporary Russian Literature Flеshing/Flashing the Discourse: Sorokin’s Master Trope Pussy Riot as the Trickstar The Formal Is Political FILM Post-Soc: Transformations of Socialist Realism in the Popular Culture of the Late 1990s–Early 2000s War as the Family Value: My Stepbrother Frankenstein by Valery Todorovsky A Road of Violence: My Joy by Sergei Loznitsa In Denial: The Geographer Drank His Globe Away by Aleksandr Veledinsky Lost in Translation: Short Stories by Mikhail Segal Works Cited

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Book SynopsisPostmodern Crises collects previously published and yet unpublished Mark Lipovetsky’s articles on Russian literature and film. Written in different years, they focus on cultural and aesthetic crises that, taken together, constitute the postmodern condition of Russian culture. The reader will find here articles about classical subversive texts (such as Nabokov’s Lolita), performances (Pussy Riot), and recent, but also subversive, films. Other articles discuss such authors as Vladimir Sorokin, such sociocultural discourses as the discourse of scientific intelligentsia; post-Soviet adaptations of Socialist Realism, and contemporary trends of “complex” literature, as well as literary characters turned into cultural tropes (the Strugatsky’s progressors). The book will be interesting for teachers and scholars of contemporary Russian literature and culture; it can be used both in undergraduate and graduate courses.Trade Review“In recent years, few scholars have transformed the fields of Russian and Slavic literary studies as rigorously as Mark Lipovetsky has. With Postmodern Crises, he unpacks the interconnections between intellectual and popular cultures and politics in contemporary Russia in a series of erudite, nuanced, nonessentialist, and—invariably!—rhetorically powerful analytical inquiries. Scholars, students, philosophers, and politicians who want to understand the crisis of postmodern paradigms, contemporary Russian literature and art, and the political crises of Putin's Russia: read this book.” -- Ellen Rutten, University of AmsterdamTable of Contents Preface LITERATURE The War of Discourses: Lolita and the Failure of a Transcendental Project The Poetics of the ITR Discourse: In the 1960s and Today The Progressor between the Imperial and the Colonial Cycles and Continuities in Contemporary Russian Literature Flеshing/Flashing the Discourse: Sorokin’s Master Trope Pussy Riot as the Trickstar The Formal Is Political FILM Post-Soc: Transformations of Socialist Realism in the Popular Culture of the Late 1990s–Early 2000s War as the Family Value: My Stepbrother Frankenstein by Valery Todorovsky A Road of Violence: My Joy by Sergei Loznitsa In Denial: The Geographer Drank His Globe Away by Aleksandr Veledinsky Lost in Translation: Short Stories by Mikhail Segal Works Cited

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Book SynopsisThis collection of Russian short stories from the 21st century includes works by famous writers and young talents alike, representing a diversity of generational, gender, ethnic and national identities. Their authors live not only in Russia, but also in Europe and the US. Short stories in this volume display a vast spectrum of subgenres, from grotesque absurdist stories to lyrical essays, from realistic narratives to fantastic parables. Taken together, they display rich and complex cultural and intellectual reality of contemporary Russia, in which political, social, and ethnic conflicts of today coexist with themes and characters resonating with classical literature, albeit invariably twisted and transformed in an unpredictable way. Most of texts in this volume appear in English for the first time. 21 may be useful for college courses but will also provide exciting reading for anyone interested in contemporary Russia.Table of Contents Nikolai Baitov Solovyov’s Trick Silentium Translated by Maya Vinokour. Evgeny Shklovsky The Street Translated by Jason Cieply. Vladimir Sorokin Smirnov Translated by Maya Vinokour. Nikolai Kononov Evgenia’s Genius Translated by Simon Schuchat. Leonid Kostyukov Verkhovsky and Son Translated by Maya Vinokour. Sergei Soloukh A Search Translated by Margarita Vaysman and Angus Balkham. Margarita Khemlin Shady Business Translated by Maya Vinokour. Elena Dolgopyat The Victim Translated by Jason Cieply. Kirill Kobrin Amadeus Translated by Veronika Lakotová. Pavel Pepperstein Tongue Translated by Bradley Gorski Aleksandr Ilichevsky The Sparrow Translated by Bradley Gorski Stanislav Lvovsky Roaming Translated by Bradley Gorski Valery Votrin Alkonost Translated by Maya Vinokour. Linor Goralik A Little Stick; 1:38 A.M.; No Such Thing Come On, It’s Funny; The Foundling; We Can’t Even Imagine Heights Like That; Cyst Translated by Maya Vinokour. Aleksey Tsvetkov Jr Priceart Translated by Sofya Khagi. Lara Vapnyar Salad Olivier Polina Barskova Reaper of Leaves Translated by Catherine Ciepiela. Arkady Babchenko Argun Translated by Nicholas Allen. Denis Osokin Ludo Logar, or Duck Throat; The New Shoes Translated by Simon Schuchat. Maria Boteva Where the Truth Is Translated by Jason Cieply. Marianna Geide Ivan Grigoriev Translated by Simon Schuchat.

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Book SynopsisThe impetus for Charms of the Cynical Reason is the phenomenal and little-explored popularity of various tricksters flourishing in official and unofficial Soviet culture, as well as in the post-soviet era. Mark Lipovetsky interprets this puzzling phenomenon through analysis of the most remarkable and fascinating literary and cinematic images of soviet and post-soviet tricksters, including such “cultural idioms” as Ostap Bender, Buratino, Vasilii Tyorkin, Shtirlitz, and others. The steadily increasing charisma of Soviet tricksters from the 1920s to the 2000s is indicative of at least two fundamental features of both the soviet and post-soviet societies. First, tricksters reflect the constant presence of irresolvable contradictions and yawning gaps within the soviet (as well as post-soviet) social universe. Secondly, these characters epitomize the realm of cynical culture thus far unrecognized in Russian studies. Soviet tricksters present survival in a cynical, contradictory and inadequate world, not as a necessity, but as a field for creativity, play, and freedom. Through an analysis of the representation of tricksters in soviet and post-soviet culture, Lipovetsky attempts to draw a virtual map of the soviet and post-soviet cynical reason: to identify its symbols, discourses, contradictions, and by these means its historical development from the 1920s to the 2000s.Trade Review“Mark Lipovetsky’s work makes a critical intervention in the study of Soviet and post-Soviet Russian culture. Recent scholarship has made great strides in overcoming the binary categories that once characterized accounts of Soviet society—in most different ways—in both the USSR and the West: official vs. unofficial, conformist vs. dissident, socialist bloc vs. the capitalist West, etc. As works in history, anthropology and sociology have begun to show, life in the Soviet Union was painted in shades of grey, admitting a huge range of economic behaviors, social interactions, and political values located “between and betwixt.” With this book, in one brilliant stroke, Lipovetsky has brought home these insights with regard to the study of Soviet literature and culture. The figure of the trickster, which Lipovetsky finds across an enormous range of important, canonical and beloved works, was at once the embodiment of socialist values and a subversive, concretizing the special forms of identity and social skills required for survival in the Soviet Union. This study shows us in a new manner what was distinctive about Soviet social and cultural history and in what ways it should be seen as a variety of the common story of modernity. Further, it explores how the cultural life of present-day Russia has inherited these structures and patterns. Lipovetsky’s erudition is vast, his critical acumen is impressive, and his writing is superbly nuanced and exciting. In short, this is a remarkable addition to scholarship.” —Kevin Platt, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at University of Pennsylvania, and author of History in a Grotesque Key: Russian Literature and the Idea of Revolution|“By focusing on the figure of the trickster, Mark Lipovetsky develops a new language for talking about subjectivity and ideology in Soviet and post-Soviet literature. The trickster shows just how inadequate talk of accommodation and resistance is when approaching the discourse of power in modern Russia. It turns out that the famously dualistic Russian culture has plenty of ways to go beyond “either/or,” and the trickster knows them all. Fortunately for us, Lipovetsky knows them as well.”—Eliot Bornstein, Professor of Russian & Slavic Studies at NYU, and the author of Men without Women: Masculinity and Revolution in Russian Fiction, 1917-1929 and Overkill: Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture|“Mark Lipovetsky has produced a welcome addition to the growing area of scholarship examining performative discourses in Soviet and post-Soviet culture….In this pioneering work Lipovestky fuses contemporary postmodern theory with a subtle and accessible discussion of literary and cinematic texts in which the trickster plays the central role….This highly original study will be useful, not only for the literary, film, and cultural historians of Soviet and post-Soviet societies, but also for graduate and advanced undergraduate students.”—Alexander Porhkorov College of William and Mary|“This rich study offers an alternative approach to traditional representations of Soviet/post-Soviet culture on a number of levels—artistic, literary, social, philosophical, psychological, and even economic—through a close investigation of the trickster myth and its transformations through a century of ‘cynical reason.’ Lipovetsky provides illuminating, thorough background on the trickster in world cultures and concentrates on the peculiar Russian manifestations of the archetype. He clearly and authoritatively outlines basic traits of the trickster, defines ‘cynical reason,’ and meticulously reads work in a variety of genres. . . . Lipovetsky’s convincing arguments support his general thesis as well as his individual analyses. Footnotes (rather than endnotes) and a good bibliography enhance the work and point to the depth and breadth of Lipovetsky’s knowledge. Highly recommended.” —C. A. Rydel, Grand Valley State University, in CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, November 2011|“[A] thorough and original study. . .Throughout these analytical chapters, Lipovetsky. . . constructs an original new history of the creative intelligentsia in Soviet Russia, with whose recurrent identity crises he draws detailed links to the distinctive characteristics of the trickster.” —Seth Graham (UCL SSEES) in the Slavonic & East European Review Vol. 92, No. 2, April 2014

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Book SynopsisLate- and Post-Soviet Russian Literature: A Reader is an introduction to the most important works of Russian literature of the last fifty years. Organised both chronologically and thematically, it is a structured presentation of significant cultural developments and literary works intended for wide use in undergraduate courses on Russian literature and culture. Each chapter includes a selection of literary texts, excerpts from the Russian press, and scholarly writings that help to elucidate the relationship between art, its historical and cultural contexts, and its reception. Much of the reader’s contents will appear in English translation for the first time. At present, no anthology of late- and post-Soviet writing exists. Late- and Post-Soviet Russian Literature: A Reader addresses this absence, and brings university curricula in Russian literature, culture, history, and area studies into the twenty-first century.Trade Review"[O]ffers an unrivaled collection of Russian literary works in English from the perestroika and early post-Soviet periods. The book also offers valuable secondary works of criticism by well-known scholars in contemporary Russian literature... Late and Post-Soviet Literature offers an authentic, thoughtful, and carefully curated collection of texts and criticism, filling a need for works on this time period. It is an ideal text for use in an undergraduate course on contemporary Russian literature in translation, and, in fact, could be used alone for this purpose and/or in combination with full novels. If the first volume is any indication, we have much to look forward to in the second volume on the Thaw and Stagnation periods." - Slavic and East European Journal, 59.2 (Summer 2015)

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Book SynopsisNew Russian Drama began its rise at the end of the twentieth century, following a decline in dramatic writing in Russia that stemmed back to the 1980s. Authors Beumers and Lipovetsky examine the representation of violence in these new dramatic works penned by young Russian playwrights. Performing Violence is the first English-language study of the consequent boom in drama and why this new breed of authors were writing fierce plays, whilst previous generations had preferred poetry and prose. Since 1999 numerous festivals of new Russian drama have taken place, which have brought international recognition to such playwrights as the Presnyakov brothers, Evgeni Grishkovets and Vasili Sigarev. At the same time, young stage directors and new theatres also emerged. New Russian Drama is therefore one of a few artistic and cultural phenomena shaped entirely in the post-Soviet period and this book investigates the violent portrayal of identity crisis of the generation as represented by theatre. Reflecting the disappointment in Yeltsin’s democratic reforms and Putin’s neo-conservative politics, the focus is on political and social representations of violence, its performances and justifications. Performing Violence seeks a vantage point for the analysis of brutality in post-Soviet culture. It is a key text for students of theatre, drama, Russian studies, culture and literature.

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Book SynopsisThis is a compendium of folkloric, literary, and critical texts that demonstrate the degree to which ancient Russian fairy-tale fantasies acquired political and historical meanings during the catastrophic twentieth century.Table of ContentsPart I: Folkloric Fairy Tales; Introduction: Helena Goscilo; The Frog Princess; The Three Kingdoms; Baba Yaga; Vasilisa the Beautiful; Maria Morevaa; Tale of Prince Ivan, the Firebird, and the Gray Wolf; The Feather of Finist the Bright Falcon; The Magic Mirror; The Magic Ring; Danila the Luckless; Ilya Muromets and the Dragon; The Maiden Tsar; Part II: Fairy Tales of Socialist Realism; Introduction: Marina Balina; Tele of the Military Secret, Malchish Kibalchish and His Solemn Word; The Golden Key or The Adventures of Buratino (excerpts); The Flower of Seven Colors; The Old Genle Hottabych (excerpts); The Malachite Caskat; Part III: Fairy Tales of Socialist Realism: Critique of Soviet Culture; Introduction: Mark Lipovetsky; Fairy Tales for Grown-Ups; The Dragon (excerpts); Tales of the Troika (excerpts); Before the Cock Crows (excerpts); That Same Munchausen (act I)

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Book SynopsisThe second volume of Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Literature: A Reader treats the literature of the Thaw and Stagnation periods (1954-1986). It includes translations of poetry and prose as well as scholarly texts that provide additional material for discussion. The goal of this volume is to present the range of ideas, creative experiments, and formal innovations that accompanied the social and political changes of the late Soviet era. Together with the introductory essays and biographical notes, the texts collected here will engage all students and interested readers of late Soviet Russian literature.Trade Review"This anthology is an indispensable tool for those who want to understand the convoluted cultural universe of the post-war Soviet Union. Bringing together texts by such diverse authors as Nikita Krushchev and Dmitry Prigov, Vladimir Vysotsky and Yevgeny Yevtushenko (among many others), the anthology presents the last four decades of Soviet culture as a polyphony of contradictory and incompatible voices. Shaped by modernists and traditionalists, formalists and realists, this period emerges as an exciting colorful mosaic of people, ideas, and texts." -- Serguei A. Oushakine, Princeton University"Both volumes provide a valuable addition to courses on late Soviet or post-Soviet literature and culture. They contain comprehensive collections of diverse materials and include texts that were not previously translated into English, in excellent translations and supplemented with footnotes, as well as previously published texts that are less familiar to American students. While both volumes have the same editors and provide new and exciting materials for courses in late Soviet and contemporary Russian culture, they differ substantially in their structure and content. Therefore, they present different advantages and challenges for being a course textbook or supplement ... Because it includes many key authors of the period, it could be used as a stand-alone course reader. Moreover, it contains a good balance of primary and secondary texts that provide additional historical and theoretical context ... Both readers present a compelling collection of materials and well-written introductory essays that might be interesting for a scholar of Russian Studies." -- Irina Anisimova, Miami University of Ohio, The Russian Review no. 76 vol. 2 April 2017Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 9 Part I: Literature of the Thaw Introduction 15 Nikita Khrushchev 25 From “Speech to the 20th Congress of the CPSU” 25 Pyotr Vail’ and Alexander Genis 43 From The Sixties: The World of the Soviet Man 44 Physicists and Lyricists. Science 44 Laughter Without Cause. Humor 52 Who Is to Blame? Dissidence 57 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 70 Robert Porter From Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich 72 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn From The Gulag Archipelago Chapter 10. Behind the Wire the Ground Is Burning 84 Chapter 12. The Forty Days of Kengir 91 Varlam Shalamov 109 On Prose 111 Eulogy 127 Vasily Grossman 144 From Forever Flowing 146 Vladimir Tendryakov 169 Bread for a Dog 170 Yulii Daniel (Nikolai Arzhak) 193 This Is Moscow Speaking 194 Andrey Sinyavsky (Abram Tertz) 234 Dissent as a Personal Experience 236 Poetry of the 1960s 254 Yevgeny Yevtushenko 255 Babii Yar 256 The Heirs of Stalin 259 The Execution of Stenka Razin (From Bratsk Hydroelectric Station) 262 Interview with Yevgeny Yevtushenko 268 Andrei Voznesensky 282 Antiworlds 283 Parabolic Ballad 285 Ballad of 1941 287 The Triangular Pear 288 Alexander Galich 291 Behind Seven Fences 292 Lenochka 294 To the Memory of Boris Leonidovich Pasternak 298 Comrades, I’ll tell you like it is 301 Vassily Aksyonov 302 From A Mysterious Passion 304 Part II: Literature of the Stagnation Introduction 335 Alexei Yurchak 341 Living “Vnye”: Deterritorialized Milieus 341 Joseph Brodsky 359 Less Than One 361 Selected Poems 385 Letters to a Roman Friend 385 May 24, 1980 388 The Hawk’s Cry in Autumn 389 Andrei Bitov 393 From Pushkin House 394 Yurii Dombrovsky 399 Little Arm, Leg, Cucumber . . . 401 Neo-Classical Poetry 421 Aleksandr Kushner 422 No, not one face, but two: the world 423 Someone’s crying all night 424 We don’t get to choose our century 425 As at every doorstep grow rowan and maple 426 Pan 427 Memoirs 428 Before the War: Recollections 429 Lev Losev 430 “I know, the Mongol yoke, the years of famine 431 I used to work for Campfire. In that dreary place 432 At a Geneva Watchmaker’s 434 Bakhtin in Saransk 435 Grammar is indeed the god of the mind 437 Amphibronchic Night 438 The house 439 A poet is compost, in him dead words 440 Near the lake, where one can easily drown 441 Cloth (doctoral dissertation) 443 Elena Shvarts 446 The Dump 447 The Invisible Hunter 448 Elegy on an X-ray Photo of my Skull 449 “I was born with an unlined palm” 451 Orpheus 452 Viktor Krivulin 454 From the cycle “Anniversary Verses” 455 Trash 455 Where Is Our New Tolstoy? 455 The Millennium Changing Shifts 456 From Metropol’ 458 Vladimir Vysotsky 461 Wolf Hunt 462 Bathhouse Blues 464 Parody of a Bad Detective Story 466 Dialogue 469 Yuz Aleshkovsky 472 Lesbian Song 473 Cigarette Butt 474 Personal Meeting 476 Genrikh Sapgir 478 A Voice 479 Radioblab 481 Monkey 483 Viktor Erofeev 485 The Metropol’ Affair 487 Sergei Dovlatov 502 The Performance 504 Evgeny Kharitonov 529 “How I Found Out”: One Boy’s Story 530 Flysheet 537 Venedikt Erofeev 540 Olga Sedakova 541 Remembering Venedikt Erofeev 542 Mikhail Epshtein 560 From “Charms of Entropy” 561 Dmitry A. Prigov 574 Selected poems from Texts of Our Life 576 Selected poems from Written Between 1975 and 1989 581 Vladimir Shinkarev 585 From Mit’ki 586

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Book SynopsisThe second volume of Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Literature: A Reader treats the literature of the Thaw and Stagnation periods (1954-1986). It includes translations of poetry and prose as well as scholarly texts that provide additional material for discussion. The goal of this volume is to present the range of ideas, creative experiments, and formal innovations that accompanied the social and political changes of the late Soviet era. Together with the introductory essays and biographical notes, the texts collected here will engage all students and interested readers of late Soviet Russian literature.Trade Review"This anthology is an indispensable tool for those who want to understand the convoluted cultural universe of the post-war Soviet Union. Bringing together texts by such diverse authors as Nikita Krushchev and Dmitry Prigov, Vladimir Vysotsky and Yevgeny Yevtushenko (among many others), the anthology presents the last four decades of Soviet culture as a polyphony of contradictory and incompatible voices. Shaped by modernists and traditionalists, formalists and realists, this period emerges as an exciting colorful mosaic of people, ideas, and texts." -- Serguei A. Oushakine, Princeton University"Both volumes provide a valuable addition to courses on late Soviet or post-Soviet literature and culture. They contain comprehensive collections of diverse materials and include texts that were not previously translated into English, in excellent translations and supplemented with footnotes, as well as previously published texts that are less familiar to American students. While both volumes have the same editors and provide new and exciting materials for courses in late Soviet and contemporary Russian culture, they differ substantially in their structure and content. Therefore, they present different advantages and challenges for being a course textbook or supplement ... Because it includes many key authors of the period, it could be used as a stand-alone course reader. Moreover, it contains a good balance of primary and secondary texts that provide additional historical and theoretical context ... Both readers present a compelling collection of materials and well-written introductory essays that might be interesting for a scholar of Russian Studies." -- Irina Anisimova, Miami University of Ohio, The Russian Review no. 76 vol. 2 April 2017Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 9 Part I: Literature of the Thaw Introduction 15 Nikita Khrushchev 25 From “Speech to the 20th Congress of the CPSU” 25 Pyotr Vail’ and Alexander Genis 43 From The Sixties: The World of the Soviet Man 44 Physicists and Lyricists. Science 44 Laughter Without Cause. Humor 52 Who Is to Blame? Dissidence 57 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 70 Robert Porter From Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich 72 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn From The Gulag Archipelago Chapter 10. Behind the Wire the Ground Is Burning 84 Chapter 12. The Forty Days of Kengir 91 Varlam Shalamov 109 On Prose 111 Eulogy 127 Vasily Grossman 144 From Forever Flowing 146 Vladimir Tendryakov 169 Bread for a Dog 170 Yulii Daniel (Nikolai Arzhak) 193 This Is Moscow Speaking 194 Andrey Sinyavsky (Abram Tertz) 234 Dissent as a Personal Experience 236 Poetry of the 1960s 254 Yevgeny Yevtushenko 255 Babii Yar 256 The Heirs of Stalin 259 The Execution of Stenka Razin (From Bratsk Hydroelectric Station) 262 Interview with Yevgeny Yevtushenko 268 Andrei Voznesensky 282 Antiworlds 283 Parabolic Ballad 285 Ballad of 1941 287 The Triangular Pear 288 Alexander Galich 291 Behind Seven Fences 292 Lenochka 294 To the Memory of Boris Leonidovich Pasternak 298 Comrades, I’ll tell you like it is 301 Vassily Aksyonov 302 From A Mysterious Passion 304 Part II: Literature of the Stagnation Introduction 335 Alexei Yurchak 341 Living “Vnye”: Deterritorialized Milieus 341 Joseph Brodsky 359 Less Than One 361 Selected Poems 385 Letters to a Roman Friend 385 May 24, 1980 388 The Hawk’s Cry in Autumn 389 Andrei Bitov 393 From Pushkin House 394 Yurii Dombrovsky 399 Little Arm, Leg, Cucumber . . . 401 Neo-Classical Poetry 421 Aleksandr Kushner 422 No, not one face, but two: the world 423 Someone’s crying all night 424 We don’t get to choose our century 425 As at every doorstep grow rowan and maple 426 Pan 427 Memoirs 428 Before the War: Recollections 429 Lev Losev 430 “I know, the Mongol yoke, the years of famine 431 I used to work for Campfire. In that dreary place 432 At a Geneva Watchmaker’s 434 Bakhtin in Saransk 435 Grammar is indeed the god of the mind 437 Amphibronchic Night 438 The house 439 A poet is compost, in him dead words 440 Near the lake, where one can easily drown 441 Cloth (doctoral dissertation) 443 Elena Shvarts 446 The Dump 447 The Invisible Hunter 448 Elegy on an X-ray Photo of my Skull 449 “I was born with an unlined palm” 451 Orpheus 452 Viktor Krivulin 454 From the cycle “Anniversary Verses” 455 Trash 455 Where Is Our New Tolstoy? 455 The Millennium Changing Shifts 456 From Metropol’ 458 Vladimir Vysotsky 461 Wolf Hunt 462 Bathhouse Blues 464 Parody of a Bad Detective Story 466 Dialogue 469 Yuz Aleshkovsky 472 Lesbian Song 473 Cigarette Butt 474 Personal Meeting 476 Genrikh Sapgir 478 A Voice 479 Radioblab 481 Monkey 483 Viktor Erofeev 485 The Metropol’ Affair 487 Sergei Dovlatov 502 The Performance 504 Evgeny Kharitonov 529 “How I Found Out”: One Boy’s Story 530 Flysheet 537 Venedikt Erofeev 540 Olga Sedakova 541 Remembering Venedikt Erofeev 542 Mikhail Epshtein 560 From “Charms of Entropy” 561 Dmitry A. Prigov 574 Selected poems from Texts of Our Life 576 Selected poems from Written Between 1975 and 1989 581 Vladimir Shinkarev 585 From Mit’ki 586

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Book SynopsisLate- and Post-Soviet Russian Literature: A Reader is an introduction to the most important works of Russian literature of the last fifty years. Organized both chronologically and thematically, it is a structured presentation of significant cultural developments and literary works intended for wide use in undergraduate courses on Russian literature and culture. Each chapter includes a selection of literary texts, excerpts from the Russian press, and scholarly writings that help to elucidate the relationship between art, its historical and cultural contexts, and its reception. Much of the reader’s contents will appear in English translation for the first time. At present, no anthology of late- and post-Soviet writing exists. Late- and Post-Soviet Russian Literature: A Reader addresses this absence, and brings university curricula in Russian literature, culture, history, and area studies into the twenty-first century.Trade Review“[O]ffers an unrivaled collection of Russian literary works in English from the perestroika and early post-Soviet periods. The book also offers valuable secondary works of criticism by well-known scholars in contemporary Russian literature. . . . Late and Post-Soviet Literature offers an authentic, thoughtful, and carefully curated collection of texts and criticism, filling a need for works on this time period. It is an ideal text for use in an undergraduate course on contemporary Russian literature in translation, and, in fact, could be used alone for this purpose and/or in combination with full novels. If the first volume is any indication, we have much to look forward to in the second volume on the Thaw and Stagnation periods.” - Slavic and East European Journal, 59.2 (Summer 2015)

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Book SynopsisThe largest, most comprehensive anthology of its kind, this volume brings together significant, representative stories from every decade of the twentieth century. It includes the prose of officially recognised writers and dissidents, both well-known and neglected or forgotten, plus new authors from the end of the century. The selections reflect the various literary trends and approaches to depicting reality in this era: traditional realism, modernism, socialist realism, and post-modernism. Taken as a whole, the stories capture every major aspect of Russian life, history and culture in the twentieth century. The rich array of themes and styles will be of tremendous interest to students and readers who want to learn about Russia through the engaging genre of the short story.Trade Review"This selection of mainly newly translated stories from the 20th century includes both well-known writers and new voices. It eschews traditional selections from the former category and presents startling writings from the latter. As the editors-translators put it themselves in their lucid introduction, these stories together form a "mega-novel" about Russia of the previous century from its first revolution to post-perestroika times." -- Irene Masing-Delic, Ohio State University“I've seen many English-language anthologies of Russian literature, but this is the first one that I want to give to all my non-specialist friends, so that they can finally understand what is so wonderful about modern Russian literature." -- Eliot Bornstein, Professor of Russian & Slavic Studies at NYU and the author of Overkill: Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture“Valentina Brougher, Mark Lipovetsky, and Frank Miller have rendered an important service to the profession by compiling a rich, judiciously selected, and carefully translated anthology of twentieth-century Russian short stories. . . . Offering a wealth of cultural and historical material, this book may serve as an introduction to twentieth-century Russian culture. Alternatively—and to my mind more fruitfully—this compilation will cater to those students and general readers who already possess knowledge of this realm and seek to enrich it further, often in unexpected and exciting ways. Of existing English-language anthologies of modern Russian short stories, 50 Writers is by far the most expansive. . . .” -- Sofya Khagi, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor * Slavic and East European Journal, vol. 58, no. 4 (Winter 2015) *

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Book SynopsisRussia possesses one of the richest and most admired literatures of Europe, reaching back to the eleventh century. A History of Russian Literature provides a comprehensive account of Russian writing from its earliest origins in the monastic works of Kiev up to the present day, still rife with the creative experiments of post-Soviet literary life. The volume proceeds chronologically in five parts, extending from Kievan Rus'' in the 11th century to the present day. The coverage strikes a balance between extensive overview and in-depth thematic focus. Parts are organized thematically in chapters, which a number of keywords that are important literary concepts that can serve as connecting motifs and ''case studies'', in-depth discussions of writers, institutions, and texts that take the reader up close and personal. Visual material also underscores the interrelation of the word and image at a number of points, particularly significant in the medieval period and twentieth century.The History addresses major continuities and discontinuities in the history of Russian literature across all periods, and in particular brings out trans-historical features that contribute to the notion of a national literature. The volume''s time range has the merit of identifying from the early modern period a vital set of national stereotypes and popular folklore about boundaries, space, Holy Russia, and the charismatic king that offers culturally relevant material to later writers. This volume delivers a fresh view on a series of key questions about Russia''s literary history, by providing new mappings of literary history and a narrative that pursues key concepts (rather more than individual authorial careers). This holistic narrative underscores the ways in which context and text are densely woven in Russian literature, and demonstrates that the most exciting way to understand the canon and the development of tradition is through a discussion of the interrelation of major and minor figures, historical events and literary politics, literary theory and literary innovation.Trade ReviewThis exhaustive volume represents a very significant contribution to the bibliography of Russian literary history from the medieval to the modern period. In its scope, conception, and engagement with scholarship, this is the kind of account which comes along only once every generation, a work informed by the lifelong study of four preeminent scholars of Russian literature from both sides of the Atlantic. ...The authors have been extraordinarily thorough throughout in their generous engagement with the scholarship and secondary literature in both Russian and English. ...It will inevitably feature in the comprehensive exam lists of all graduate students of Russian literature. * Kate Holland, Slavic Review *The Oxford History paves the way * Caryl Emerson, Princeton University, Slavonic and East European Review *All academic fields are under pressure to be constantly open to shifting global perspectives and previously unheard voices. Can even the most meticulous hard-copy linear narrative hope to keep up with these challenges? In my view, the new Oxford A History of Russian Literature, a staggering accomplishment, manages to do so. * Carly Emerson, Princeton University, Slavonic and East European Review *This new history of Russian literature written by four Slavists is an interesting and useful book. It is a very timely book... It is informative, the material, nonetheless, fits compactly in one volume. It covers the familiar and also offers an abundance of unusual solutions/positions. It is addressed to the Anglophone readers but holds just as much interest for the Russian. The sociological approach that the authors maintain is realized in the special attention to institutions and conditions in which literature functions (from Ancient Russia to post-perestroika Russia); to the evolution of subjectivity, manifested in literary forms that also give evidence of the self-awareness of man in different periods; to the narratives that, on the one hand, can be extracted from texts and, on the other, form national identity. Literature both mirrors societal life and defines it. * Translated from New Literary Observer (Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie) *Of particular importance to nonspecialists will be inclusion throughout of detailed definitions of key literary and historical terms. A section of color plates, along with black-and-white illustrations, afford welcome visual perspective. The bibliography and endnotes are exhaustive and have already served this reviewer's further investigations. This comprehensive, articulate history should prove invaluable to a broad readership. ... Summing up: "Essential". * CHOICE *what Kahn, Lipovetsky, Reyfman and Sandler have managed to encompass and contextualize ... is nothing short of staggering. * Boris Dralyuk, Times Literary Supplement *Table of ContentsPART I. THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD Institutions and contexts: writing and authorship, 1100-1400 Holy Russia: landmarks in medieval literature Local narratives PART II. THE EARLY MODERN: THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY Paradise Lost: National narratives Cultural interface: printing, Humanist learning and Orthodox resistance in the second half of the seventeenth century Court theater Poets Prose PART III. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Defining Classicism: the canons of taste Institutions of writing and authorship National narratives Poetics and subjectivities between Classicism and Romanticism Prose fiction PART IV. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Institutions The Literary Field: from amateur societies to professional institutions and literary alliances Subjectivities Forms of Prose Literary identity and social structure of the Imperial period Types: Heroes and anti-heroes Heroines and emancipation Narratives of nation-building PART V. THE TWENTIETH AND TWENTY-FIRST CENTURIES Institutions The Poetics of Subjectivity The Poetics of Language Prose and Drama: negotiations with history Catastrophic narratives Intelligentsia narratives

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