Reconstructing The Canon

This volume contains articles about and by some of the most important Russian writers of the 1980s, a period of great change in the cultural life of Russia when the controls of Soviet communism gave way to a wide diversity of unfettered writing (one extreme example of which is Vladimir Sorokin), which sometimes seem to represent disillusion with literature itself.

A variety of critical approaches matches the diversity of emigre and metropolitan Russian writers considered here.

The book features David Bethea's theoretical discussion of the work of the outstanding critic and scholar Iurii Lotman and a fascinating extended interview with leading poet Ol'ga Sedaova.

Several writers and works receive their first scholarly analyses in English, such as emigre Sasha Sokolov's complex postmodern novel, Between Dog and Wolf , Elena Shvart's poetry, and Zinovii Zinik's work.

Another emigre Aleksandr Zinov'ev's prose is subjected to searching formal analysis.

The book contains an essay on the literary environment of a talented Moscow poet Mikhail Aizenberg, an internal emigre, and a highly controversial article that reviews Russian writing as an extension of imperialism.Writers who for various reasons fell into opprobrium during the 1980s include the Soviet village writers and the late Andrei Siniavskii (Abram Tertz).

A survey of urban prose in the late 1980s looks into an uncertain future, while playwright Viktor Slavkin represents the best of contemporary Russian drama.