History and literature in contemporary Russia

Abstract

Rosalind Marsh. History and Literature Contemporary Russia. New York: New York University Press, 1995. xi, 289 pp. Index. $42.50, cloth. Few literary systems have been subjected to the degree of dramatic change that Russian literary culture experienced during the perestroika years. In the period 1985-1991, Russian literature was transformed from a closed, highly normative system subject to intrusive state control into one influenced more by market censure rather than government censorship. Equally true, few literatures have been as historically conscious of their role as a forum for social and moral commentary as Russian literature. In her valuable book, Rosalind Marsh combines these topics both to discuss the role literature played preparing for and facilitating the momentous social changes that took place during the Gorbachev era, and to examine the state of literature and history contemporary Russia. As a means of mastering so potentially broad a field of inquiry, Marsh's analysis is primarily thematic. After briefly outlining the cultural context of the period under discussion and introducing two writers of central importance, Shatrov and Rybakov, the bulk of Marsh's book proceeds to an investigation of seven important historical themes the literature of the period. In discussing their literary treatment and attendant critical debate, Marsh is able to focus her discussion of the literary representation of historical themes and contemporary social response to those topics. Before attending to her analysis of the literary treatment of historical themes during this period, however, Marsh provides an interesting and highly informative temporal outline of the literary cultural developments during perestroika. Essentially, Marsh delineates four phases of glasnost according to the changes that led to increasingly liberal cultural policies-from March 1985, when Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, to 1990, the year which saw the inauguration of multi-party politics and the codification of the Law on Press Freedoms. Here, Marsh briefly, though skilfully, recounts the way which the incremental changes initiated by Gorbachev to foster his reform plans were seized from below by concerned writers and editors their efforts continually to press the limits of glasnost the interests of increased literary freedom. Related to the chronology of changes during the Gorbachev years, though now greater detail and with greater emphasis on literature, Marsh next analyses two separate chapters literary developments from the years 1985-1986 and the year 1987. Examining works written during this period and also those which surfaced for publication after years of waiting in the desk drawer, Marsh chronicles the first tentative probings of such previously problematic topics as Stalinism, the terror, industrialization, the deportation of nationalities and the rehabilitation of repressed writers. Taking her study into still further greater detail-while maintaining emphasis on the tentative quality of change during the early years of perestroika-Marsh turns attention to two writers who published works 1987, Anatolii Rybakov and Mikhail Shatrov. Marsh uses the examples of Rybakov's Children of the Arbat and Shatrov's play The Peace of Brest-Litovsk, to demonstrate how, although changes were being contemplated the re-appraisal and depiction of Soviet history, the changes being considered were still ultimately the service of socialist orthodoxy, albeit modified and liberalized. …