RUS 142YSoviet and Post-Soviet Russian Literature in English Translation

3 credits · Russian · Penn State

For most of the time since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Russia has existed under some form of dictatorship, with the paradoxical effect that literature continued to matter as it does in few other countries. While the government tried to mobilize writers as state propagandists, the best of them have possessed the power to enrage tyrants and to speak for the suffocating conscience of their country. Not limited to political themes, their books also offer a great deal of variety, including modernist experimentation, grotesque humor and dark fantasy. This course surveys crucial works by mainstream Soviet authors, members of the dissident underground, Russian émigrés, and the contemporary diaspora of writers who have fled from Vladimir Putin's regime.