TLÜ ÕIS

20th Century Russian Literature

Course code

SKS6213.HT

old course code

Course title in Estonian

20. sajandi vene kirjandus

Course title in English

20th Century Russian Literature

ECTS credits

6.0

Assessment form

Examination

lecturer of 2026/2027 Autumn semester

Not opened for teaching. Click the study programme link below to see the nominal division schedule.

lecturer of 2026/2027 Spring semester

Not opened for teaching. Click the study programme link below to see the nominal division schedule.

Brief description of the course

Realism and Modernism. Those who reject „new art“ (Ivan Bunin, Anton Chekhov, et al.). The main trends of Russian Modernism: Symbolism (Alexander Blok, Andrei Belyi, Valery Bryusov, Zinaida Gippius, Dmitri Merezhkovsky, Fyodor Sologub, et al.), Acmeism (Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilev, Osip Mandel’shtam, et al.), Futurism (David Burlyuk, Velimir Khlebnikov, Alexei Kruchenykh, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Igor Severyanin). The invention of proletarian literature. Soviet literature of the 1920s: the concept of the poputchik (fellow traveler). Soviet literature of the 1930s: the invention of Socialist Realism. Culture and totalitarianism. Literature as a social phenomenon: unions, magazines, publishing houses, awards. The development of Russian émigré literature. An overview of Russian literature after the deaths of Boris Pasternak (1960) and Anna Akhmatova (1966). Two poetics (the poetics of subjectivity and the poetics of language) as the two major trends in 20th-century Russian literature(s).

Learning outcomes in the course

Upon completing the course the student:
- distinguishes Realism and Modernism as two competing literary movements;
- understands the major trends in Russian Modernism;
- analyzes the distinctive features of early, mid-, and late Soviet Russian literature;
- distinguishes two periods in Russian émigré literature: before 1940 and after the end of World War II.

Teacher

Grigori Utgof

Prerequisite course 1

19th Century Russian Literature (SKS6212.HT)

Study programmes containing that course