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Soviet Union [USSR] The Age of Realism in Literature
Russian literature in the last half of the nineteenth century
provided a congenial and artistic medium for the discussion of
political and social issues that could not be addressed directly
because of government restrictions. The writers of this period
shared important qualities: great attention to realistic, detailed
descriptions of everyday Russian life; the lifting of the taboo on
describing the vulgar, unsightly side of life; and a satirical
attitude toward mediocrity and routines. Although varying widely in
style, subject matter, and viewpoint, these writers stimulated
government bureaucrats, nobles, and intellectuals to think about
important social issues. This period of literature, which became
known as the Age of Realism, lasted from about mid-century to 1905.
The literature of the Age of Realism owed a great debt to three
authors and to a literary critic of the preceding half-century:
Aleksandr Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolai Gogol, and Vissarion
Belinskii. These figures set a pattern for language, subject
matter, and narrative techniques, which before 1830 had been very
poorly developed. The critic Belinskii became the patron saint of
the radical intelligentsia throughout the century.
The main outlet for literary opinion in the Age of Realism was
the "thick journal"--a combination of original literature,
criticism, and a wide variety of other material. These publications
reached a large portion of the intelligentsia. Most of the
materials of the major writers and critics of the period were
featured in such journals, and published debates were common
between journals of various viewpoints. Much of the prose
literature of the period contained sharply polemical messages,
favoring either radical or reactionary positions concerning the
problems of Russian society. Ivan Turgenev was perhaps the most
successful at integrating social concerns with true literary art.
His Hunter's Sketches and Fathers and Sons portrayed
Russia's problems with great realism and with enough artistry that
these works have survived as classics. Many writers of the period
did not aim for social commentary, but the realism of their
portrayals nevertheless drew comment from radical critics. Such
writers included the novelist Ivan Goncharov, whose Oblomov
is a very negative portrayal of the provincial gentry, and the
dramatist Aleksandr Ostrovskii, whose plays uniformly condemned the
bourgeoisie.
Above all the other writers stand two: Lev Tolstoy and Fedor
Dostoevskii, the greatest talents of the age. Their realistic style
transcended immediate social issues and explored universal issues
such as morality and the nature of life itself. Although
Dostoevskii was sometimes drawn into polemical satire, both writers
kept the main body of their work above the dominant social and
political preoccupations of the 1860s and 1870s. Tolstoy's War
and Peace and Anna Karenina and Dostoevskii's Crime
and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov have endured
as genuine classics because they drew the best from the Russian
realistic heritage while focusing on broad human questions.
Although Tolstoy continued to write into the twentieth century, he
rejected his earlier style and never again reached the level of his
greatest works.
The literary careers of Tolstoy, Dostoevskii, and Turgenev had
all ended by 1881. Anton Chekhov, the major literary figure in the
last decades of the nineteenth century, contributed in two genres:
short stories and drama. Chekhov, a realist who examined not
society as a whole but the foibles of individuals, produced a large
volume of sometimes tragic, sometimes comic, short stories and
several outstanding plays, including The Cherry Orchard, a
dramatic chronicling of the decay of a Russian aristocratic family.
Data as of May 1989
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