The Mystique of the Russian Novel

Since they burst onto the scene in the 1800s seemingly, like Minerva, to spring fully-formed from the minds of Russian geniuses, Russian novels have captivated the imagination and attention of human thought. Though Russia herself has, in the West, been perceived as backward, regressive, and politically oppressive, her novels, the flower of her creative thought, have been hailed as free-thinking works of genius.

In a way, it's not surprising. Russia is a land of contradictions. The inherent tension between the subjects of novels and the reality of Russian life has given a remarkable life to the Russian novel; the lack of other prose outlets that did not lead to life in the gulags throughout the 19th and 20th centuries drove Russia's thinkers and philosopher to a life of writing fiction.

Russian Literary History

Russian literature was very sparse until the time of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, largely due to the chaos caused by the Mongols and other tribal groups nipping at the edges of the country. With the new stability of Imperial Russia, the popular language, using a reformed Russian alphabet, became the choice for general literary purposes. The first great writers in Russian history, though hardly known in the West, include Vasily Trediakovsky and Mikhail Lomonosov.

But Russian literature's golden age was in the 1800s. Russian society, as always contradictory, was both encouraging great freedom of thought and innovation, while firmly suppressing any kind of political insurrection or discussion of the current problems in Russia. In such a culture, it was impossible to talk about these things except in story form.

At the same time, Russians were being influenced by the Romantics from England, the United States, France, and Germany. Russian literature began to flower into a romantic tradition, blended with a realism the rest of Europe was slow to start: Aleksandr Pushkin, the fabulist Ivan Krylov, and the brilliant Russian novelists: Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Leshkov, Ivan Turgenev, Saltykov Schedrin, Goncharov.

The grand literary tradition begun here continued into the chaos of the 20th century, when radicals and revolutionaries spoke out against the government but, once in power, maintained the same firm control, suppressing and sublimating free thought into literature. Anton Chekhov wrote brilliant short stories, and Mikhail Sholokhov was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature, as did the exile Ivan Alekseyhevich Bunin. With the inception of the Nobel Prizes, in fact, Russian novelists started a tradition of being nominated for the Literature prize. Maxim Gorky, Aleksei Tolstoy, Vladimir Mayakovsky proved themselves to be among the greatest in the world, not just in the Soviet Union. Others wrote in secret, continuing the classical tradition of Russian literature against the orders of the State: Mikhail Bulgakov, Boris Pasternak, Isaac Babel, Andrei Platonov. And others in exile, like Nabokov and Andrey Bely, continued to write in Russian, proudly continuing their heritages though they were not free to return.

The Russian Novel and Politics

All this leads one to a few conclusions. First, that Russian literature took its deep and serious tone because of the difficulty inherent in openly discussing politics. One could not freely discuss the problems of the day, nor the historical events that led to these problems; instead, Russians complained about the immediate problems they had, implying what little they could under the Tsars and the Communist dictators. True introspection about the Russian situation took the form of the novel.

And while in America it was easy enough to write a political treatise that was also a novel, Russian novelists could never be so straightforward. Instead, they took a longitudinal view of the lives of their characters. By following them through all the phases of their lives and pioneering the show-don't-tell axiom of modern writing, they deepened their stories and addressed social problems obliquely through their characters' experiences.

The Russians Writing in English

More than one great Russian writer has fled to another country because of a lack of freedom or political disagreement with the government. Joseph Konrad's parents were aristocrats, involved in the 1863 insurrection; they fled when their part in the revolution was found out, and Konrad was raised after their deaths by an uncle who lived in England. Nabokov was the scion of an aristocratic family who fled Russia when the February Revolution supplanted the Tsar and led to the rise of Communism. It is one of the tragedies of Communism in Russia that so many of their most brilliant fled, but it was a gift to the world; the genius of these writers was disseminated throughout the world, rather than being trapped behind the Iron Curtain.

Joseph Konrad (or Józef Teodor Nałęcz Konrad Korzeniowski) is claimed as a brilliant British writer – yet he was Russian, a Polish Ukranian who spoke Russan as his primary language, and French as his secondary one. English was his third language, learned as an adult, and the one he chose to write in. Though he disliked most Russian literature, upon reading works like Heart of Darkness you can see the Russian sensibilities throughout: the dense storytelling with complex lines, deep characterization, and a way of telling the story without judging that brings out the horror and outrage of political events. No one without Konrad's unique blend of backgrounds could have written the stories he did.

Nabokov, too, wrote in English, though not exclusively; he was trilingual from childhood, and also wrote in French and Russian. The tale he's best known for, Lolita, was written in English while Nabokov lived in the United States. But Nabokov was long recognized for his literary genius, and was given sinecure in Wellesley College, where his legacy includes the Russian Studies program there. His work is a peculiar blend of multilingual wordplay, the symbolism so often found in Russian novels, and both American and Russian sensibilities.

Character in the Russian Novel

Perhaps in no other literature in the world has character taken such a central position. From the tormented Anna Karenina, to the elitist Raskolnikov of Crime and Punishment, beautifully drawn characters with real depth and dimension have wrangled with questions of morality. Again, this may be because free discussion of thought is so difficult to achieve in the Russia of today and the last two centuries; it has almost become a national trait to avoid real discussion of morality and politics.

For the world, though, this has been a gift. The heroes in Russian novels, people who do good and fail, yet are happy, were the precursors to the antiheroes in modern American novels. The breathtaking depth of characters in Russian novels has shown writers in a hundred other countries a path to take when creating a character of sense and of sensibility: how to be moral yet real, how to fail and still be heroic, and how to display a person's character against the fabric of a life.

Russian Novels and Romanticism

Yet for all their acclaimed brilliance, Russian novels are romantic dreams, in a very real way. The Russian novel tends to love aspiration rather than achievement, and dreamers are more beloved than those whose energies have created something. In fact, energy seems so raw in Russian novels as to be vulgar. Kindness is beloved as well, or perhaps more accurately the search for a personal moral compass that can guide the character through the pitfalls of life. This is remarkable when one considers how many Russian governments have tried to dictate morality to the people!

Russian Literature Today

One of the tragedies of Russian literature is that after Stalin, no style was permitted except Socialist realism. The escape valve for political speech that had been available throughout the years under the Tsars was severely curtailed under Stalin. Yet authors like Solzhenitsyn braved the gulags to continue writing what they wanted to write, clandestinely.

Though these secret writings and others have become known in the last half of the twentieth century, in post-Soviet Russia writers seem to have lost their direction. Vladimir Sorokin stands out above the other writers, but few authors are standing out over the pulps. It would be a loss to the world if Russian writers do not soon find their sense of direction and their sense of self. After all, the land of Russia for centuries has taken its nature from the stories that come out of its people; with a stable and fertile literature, perhaps the country would follow.

Russia has always risen above her situation, after all.