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This book, first published in 1944, is a comprehensive survey of post-revolutionary Russian literature up to the early 1940s. A huge range of writers are examined, and the analysis is made in the knowledge of the sometimes considerable pressure brought by the Government on writers in Soviet Russia. Links are made by the author between the writers being assessed, as well as to the Russian writers that had come before them. As a wide-ranging analysis of Soviet literature, this book has rarely been bettered.
List of contents
1. Pre-Revolutionary Writers After 1924 1.1. Literature and the Revolution 1.2. Bely 1.3. Gorky 1.4. A.N. Tolstoy 1.5. Ehrenburg 1.6. Veresaev 1.7. Prishvin and Sergeyev-Tsensky 1.8. Zamyatin 2. Two Revolutionary Romantics 2.1. Babel 2.2. Vsevolod Ivanov 3. The Revival of the Novel 3.1. The Serapion Brothers 3.2. Fedin 3.3. Leonov 3.4. Kaverin 3.5. Slonimsky and Savich 3.6. Lavrenev, Malyshkin and Lebedenko 4. Writers of Everyday Life 4.1. Chroniclers of the Revolution 4.2. Seyfullina 4.3. Romanov 4.4. Lidin 4.5. Kataev 4.6. Zoshchenko 4.7. Ilf and Petrov 4.8. Levin and some others 5. The Proletarian Writers 5.1. From the 'Proletkult' to the Five Year Plan and After 5.2. Gladkov 5.3. Panferov 5.4. Libedinsky 5.5. Fadeyev 5.6. Sholokhov 5.7. Malashkin and others 6. Yury Olesha and His 'Envy' 7. Literature of the Five-Year Plan 8. 'Counter-Revolutionary' Tendencies in Soviet Literature 8.1. The 'Neo-Bourgeois' and 'Kulak' Spirit in Literature 8.2. Zamyatin's We 8.3. Pilnyak's Mahogany 8.4. Budantsev's Sufferings of Mind 8.5. Bulgakov 9. The Historical Novel 10. The Poets 10.1. Decline of Poetry 10.2. Mayakovsky and Esenin 10.3. Pasternak 10.4. Tikhonov 10.5. Selvinsky and Constructivism 10.6. Bagritsky 10.7. Aseyev 10.8. Bezymensky and Other Proletarian Poets 10.9. The Poets' Prose: Mandelstam, Pasternak, Tikhonov 11. The Drama 12. Literary Criticism and Literary Theories 12.1. Formalism 12.2. Sociological Method 13. Government Policy in Matters of Literature 13.1. From 1918 to the Five Year Plan 13.2. The 'Reform' of 1932 and After 14. Latest Developments: Socialist Realism: Nationalism vs. 'Westernism' and 'Classicism' vs. 'Modernism'
Summary
This book, first published in 1944, is a comprehensive survey of post-revolutionary Russian literature up to the early 1940s. A huge range of writers are examined, and as a wide-ranging analysis of Soviet literature, this book has rarely been bettered.
