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EARLY HISTORY Old Russian literature consists of several sparse masterpieces written in the Old Russian Language (not to be confused with the contemporaneous Church Slavonic ). Anonymous works of this nature include '' The Tale Of Igor's Campaign '' (Слово о Полку Игореве, Slovo o Polku Igoreve) and the '' Praying Of Daniel The Immured '' (Моление Даниила Заточника, or Moleniye Daniila Zatochnika). The so-called ''жития святых'' (zhitiya svyatikh, Lives Of The Saints ) formed a popular Genre of the Old Russian literature. The '' Life Of Alexander Nevsky '' (Житие Александра Невского, or Zhitiye Aleksandra Nevskogo) offers a well-known example. Other Russian literary monuments include '' Zadonschina '', '' Physiologist '', '' Synopsis '' and '' A Journey Beyond The Three Seas ''. Bylinas -- oral folk epics -- fused Christian and pagan traditions. Medieval Russian literature had an overwhelmingly religious character and used an adapted form of the Church Slavonic language with many South Slavic elements. The first work in colloquial Russian , the autobiography of archpriest Avvakum , emerged only in the mid- 17th Century . PETRINE ERA The "Westernization" of Russia , commonly associated with Peter The Great and Catherine The Great , coincided with a reform of the Russian alphabet and increased tolerance of the idea of employing the popular language for general literary purposes. Authors like Antioch Kantemir , Vasily Trediakovsky , and Mikhail Lomonosov in the earlier 18th Century paved the way for poets like Derzhavin , playwrights like Sumarokov and Fonvizin , and prose writers like Karamzin and Radishchev . GOLDEN AGE The 19th century is traditionally referred to as the "Golden Age" of Russian literature. and Aleksandr Pushkin came to the fore, followed by Mikhail Lermontov and Fyodor Tyutchev . Nineteenth-century developments included Ivan Krylov the fabulist; non-fiction writers such as Belinsky and Herzen ; playwrights such as Griboedov and Ostrovsky ; poets such as Evgeny Baratynsky , Konstantin Batyushkov , Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov , Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy , Fyodor Tyutchev , and Afanasij Fet ; Kozma Prutkov (a collective pen name) the satirist; and a group of widely-recognised novelists such as Nikolai Gogol , Leo Tolstoy , Fyodor Dostoevsky , Leskov , Ivan Turgenev , Saltykov-Shchedrin and Goncharov . SILVER AGE Other genres came to the fore with the approach of the 20th century. Anton Chekhov excelled in writing short stories and drama, and Anna Akhmatova represented innovative lyricists. The beginning of the 20th century ranks as the Silver Age of Russian poetry. Well-known writers of the period include: Anna Akhmatova , Innokenty Annensky , Andrei Bely , Alexander Blok , Valery Bryusov , Marina Tsvetaeva , Sergei Esenin , Nikolay Gumilyov , Daniil Kharms , Velimir Khlebnikov , Osip Mandelstam , Vladimir Mayakovsky , Boris Pasternak , Fedor Sologub and Maximilian Voloshin . SOVIET ERA '' has moved from underground Cult Classic to recognised satirical masterpiece]] ts. Meanwhile, ''émigré'' writers such as Nobel Prize winner Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin , Alexander Kuprin , Andrey Bely , Marina Tsvetaeva and Vladimir Nabokov continued to flourish in exile. In post- Stalin Russia, ''Socialist realism'' remained the only permitted style; writers like Nobel Prize winner Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (who built his works on the legacy of the Gulag camps) or Venedikt Erofeev continued the tradition of clandestine literature. Post-Communist Russia saw most of these works published and become a part of mainstream culture. However, even before the decay of the Soviet Union, tolerance to non-mainstream art had slowly started to grow, especially during the Khrushchev Thaw . Some works of Bulgakov, Solzhenitsyn and Varlam Shalamov were published in the 1960s. Social criticism, as in the Science Fiction of the Strugatsky Brothers and the literature of the Mitki s became popular. As another post-Stalin development, Bard Poetry developed. In the late Soviet era émigré authors like Nobel prize winner Joseph Brodsky and short story writer Sergei Dovlatov became successful in the West, but remained known in the Soviet Union only in Samizdat . POST-SOVIET ERA The end of the 20th century and the early 21st century has proven a difficult period for Russian literature, with relatively few writers raising above the mass of pulp fiction, such as Victor Pelevin or Vladimir Sorokin . Of course, only history will reveal the final worth of this period. In the early 21st century the reading public in Russia has shown considerable interest in new quality literature. Many new authors have emerged, along with new publishing companies, new brands and new literature series. Traditional Russian prose remains popular, and distinctive work has come out of the Russian provinces: for example Nina Gorlanova from Perm has written stories about the everyday problems and joys of the provincial intelligentsia. Detective stories and thrillers have proven a very successful genre of new Russian literature: note the interesting phenomenon of the huge interest in ironic detective stories by Darya Dontsova . She has written about 50 novels, and her books have appeared published in millions of copies and even translated in Europe. '', has appeared in the USA. Many critics have praised this novel as a new '' Doctor Zhivago '' large-scale Russian novel, which tells the story of the Russian Gradov family struggling to survive in the Stalin era. Several Russian writers have become rather popular in the West, such as Tatyana Tolstaya and (especially) Lyudmila Ulitskaya . Detective-story writer Boris Akunin , with his series about the 19th century sleuth Erast Fandorin , publishes in Europe and in the USA. Alexandra Marinina , the most popular female detective-story writer in Russia, has succeeded in publishing her books around Europe, especially in Germany. The 2003 Frankfurt Book Fair selected Russia as its special guest of the year. See List Of Russians and List Of Russian Authors for more names. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS |
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