About Russia

The Map:

The defeat of the Russian Empire in World War I led to the seizure of power 
by the communists and the formation of the USSR. The brutal rule of Josef 
STALIN (1924-53) strengthened Russian dominance of the Soviet Union at a 
cost of tens of millions of lives. The Soviet economy and society stagnated in
the following decades until General Secretary Mikhail GORBACHEV (1985-91)
introduced glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) in an attempt to
modernize communism, but his initiatives inadvertently released forces that by 
December 1991 splintered the USSR into 15 independent republics. Since then, 
Russia has struggled in its efforts to build a democratic political system and
market economy to replace the strict social, political, and economic controls of 
the communist period.

Location: Northern Asia (that part west of the Urals is sometimes included with Europe),
 bordering the Arctic Ocean, between Europe and the North Pacific Ocean.

Geographic coordinates: 60 00 N, 100 00 E

Map references: Asia

Area: total:  17,075,200 sq km
          land:  16,995,800 sq km
          water:  79,400 sq km

Area - comparative: slightly less than 1.8 times the size of the US

Land boundaries: total:  19,961 km

Russian literature

  Aleksandr Pushkin (Russian Great literay Genius)


  Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  Leo TolsToi

About the Rivals on national literature in critical worldwide
esteem having achieved this position solely through
works written since 1820 Russian honored poet Aleksandr Pushkin,
who died in 1837,above all other written, but it was through
the great mid 19th century master of prose fiction especially
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoi and Ivan Turgenev.

  Anton Chekhov

First gained the attention of foreign readers, among later
authors the short-story writer and dramatist Anton Chevkov
is the most admired of writers since the 1917 revolution,
the most widely poetry and the novelist Mikhail Sholokhov and
Alekandr Solzhenitsyn.

From 1240 to 1480, Russia�s princes ruled as vassals of the tatars, during this period,
in which Moscow acquired political ascendancy, literature remained
largely religious, didactic. One well-known work of the time, was
the Zodoshchina, is a 15th century accounts of the Russian first major victory
over the tartars at kulikovo in 1380.

18^th century

By 18^th  century , led by Peter the Great(1682-1725) Russia came under 
the influnce of culturally as well as economically more advanced civilization
of western Europe even they felt hampered by the undeveloped condition of 
their language. A burst of literary activity ensued, involving literary imitations
and linguistics experiments.

             Writers:

             Anton Kantemir (1709-44) was the first poet to write in vernacular,
 His �On the detractors of learning, to my mind�(1729;Eng.trans.1749). Brought
 him to the attention of influential social reformers. The poet, scholar and scientist 
 Mikhail Lomonosov, played a particular prominent part in standardizing the
 colloquial language. as he distinguish three literary styles.  

Nikolai Karamzin helped forge the modern cultural language with his
 sentimental �Letters of Russian traveler�(1790), and with his chief work, the
two volumes �Istorya gosudarstva rossiyskogo � (History of Russian State).

Ivan Krylov, Russia great fabulist, also wrote at this time. For the stage
 Aleksandr Sumarokov produced the tragedy �demetrius the Impostor (1781)�,
and several minor comedias.

Pushkin and his Immediate Successors

In 19^th century, Russia�s greatest literary genius Aleksandr Pushkin, completed
the process of adapting the language as a literary vehicle, his greatest poems
include the verse novel Eugene Onegin (1823-31), The Bronze Horsemen (1832)
a collection of folktale; The verse play Boris Godonov  and a wealth of lyrics notable
for eloquence, playfulness and precision of their style. 

            Significant writers.  

     Aleksandr Griboyedov (1795-1829), a Russian playwright
and diplomat is best remembered for his brilliant satirical comedy
the �Misfortune of being Clever� (1833) this play attack the conservation
of the contemporary Russian aristocracy.

Fyodor Tyutche wrote some of the most moving poems and
nature lyrics in the Russians language, a diplomat lived in Munich.

Mikhail Lermontov works deals with frustrations and isolation,
when Lermontov died in duel he left an impressive collection of lyrics and
longer poems as well as a �Hero of our Time�, Russia�s first physiological novel.

Nikolai Gogol move from romanticism to his own eccentric brand of
realism, he�s best know for such historical short stories as �Tara�s Bulba� and
the satire called the �Inspector General�.

Realism 

The general characteristics of 19^th century Russian  realism include the urge to
explore the human condition in a spirit of serious inquiry, although without
excluding humor and satire as it emphasis on character and atmosphere other
than on plot and action, and underlying tolerance of human weakness and wickedness.

Modernism

From the mid 1890s to about 1925 a variety of avant-garde movements, of which
symbolism was the most influential at the outset, replaced realism as the
dominant literary current, while the main emphasis moved from prose to poetry.
The symbolist advocated creative experiment with poetic language and helped
restore both craftsman and mystery to literature. The foremost symbolist poet
was Aleksandr Blok who survived the revolution to commemorate it in his disturbing
and most famous verse epic The Twelve (1917). Other leading symbolist poets were
Valery Bryusov, Konstantin Balmont and Andrei Bely.

The 1920�s

 Isaac Babel and His Works

After the October Revolution of 1917 literature was quickly subordinated to Communist
political control. In the 1920�s the regimentation of writing was severe but erratic and
largely ineffective because authors were free to write what they like unless their
work could be interpreted as counterrevolutionary. Writers were not told by Soviet authority
what they were to say, still less how they were to say it. Accordingly, the important
pre-Revolutionary poets mentioned above continued to write for a time. The 1920s also
saw the publication of such original prose writers as Isaak Babel and Yury Olesha. 

Literature under Stalin 

With the rise of Joseph Stalin to the position of unchallenged dictator (1930) more
positive controls were imposed. Writers had to produced what was, in effect
advertising copy boosting Stalin�s regime. One result was a spate of long novels
idealizing the industrial drive launched by the first Five Year Plan (1929). These
included Time Forward (1933) by Valentin Katayev, Which described the frenetic
enthusiasm of concrete pourers building steel smelters in Magnitogorsk. 

            Writers:

            Mikhail Sholokhov a four-volume novel The Quiet Don (1928) hold the scales
remarkably even between reds and whites in its depiction of the Russian Civil War
of 1918-21 as it affected the Don Cossacks.

  Leonid Leonov write the six novels all take liberties with ideological conformism,
it include the Soviet River (1930) describing the chaotic conditions attending the building of
the paper mill, and the Russian Forest (1954) an eloquent protest against the wholesome
pillage of Russia�s Woodland. 

            Mikhail Bulgakov who�s influential novel The Master and Margarita was
finished shortly after the author�s death in 1940 but was first published (with censorship cut)
in Union Soviet Socialist Republic. 

            Ivan Bunin left Russia in 1919 but continued to write in his native language and
 on Russia themes; in 1933 he became the first Russian to receive the novel prize for Literature.

Post-Stalin Developments

  Ilya works

Stalin�s death in1953 was soon followed by a limited relaxation of literary controls.
 Such Iliya Ehrenburg�s short novel The Thaw epitomized this new official liberality. Far
more outspokenly critical of soviet official claims was Pasternak�s novel Doctor Zhivago,
which was banned in USSR but published abroad in 1958 along much translation.
The works became the most internationally influential Russian literary document of the century,
 partly because of the scandal created when the author was forced by Soviet officialdom to
decline the Novel Prize offered to him in 1958. 

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn�s lengthy short story
One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), which created a furor by openly describing
life in a Soviet forced-labor camp. Solzhenitsyn�s longer works of fiction, however including
The Cancer Wizard, The first Circle (both 1968), and The Gulang Archipelago (1973-75)
were all smuggled abroad and published in Europe, Both in Russian and various translations.
He receive the novel prize in 1970 and expelled from the union soviet four years later.