BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – The 20th century provided an unprecedented backdrop for social, political and economic upheaval in Russia. The literature born from this sweeping change is the subject of a new book co-edited by Illinois Wesleyan University’s Isaac Funk Professor of Russian Studies Marina Balina.
The book, The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Russian Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2011), is part of the Cambridge Companions to Literature collection, and brings together an impressive assembly of scholars from such universities as Yale, Columbia, Oxford, Harvard and Princeton. “These are some of the most prolific Russian scholars of our time,” said Balina, who also contributed an introduction and a chapter on Soviet prose after Stalin. “We all came together with one idea – let us create a tool that will help us teach, and help students to learn.” The contributors present the most up-to-date scholarship on the historical and cultural context of the 20th century literary development, and place Russian authors within the changing framework.
“With the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the publication of previously unknown sources in Russia – among them works by dissident and émigré writers – readers and scholars were able to see a unified body of Russian literature in its fullness,” said Balina, who co-edited the book with University of Sheffield’s Professor of Russian Studies Evgeny Dobrenko.