This paper is available for the academic year 2025-26.
Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953 launched a new era in Soviet and Russian cultural history as artists confronted the past and looked for new means of self-expression. This paper examines literature, film, drama, and visual art produced from 1953 to the 1990s, with an emphasis on the Soviet period. It situates cultural texts in historical, social and political context while providing a range of theoretical tools for analysing post-Stalinist and late Soviet works.
Texts listed below constitute a core ‘menu’ for each topic: you are not expected to read all of them, nor do you need to limit your reading to these texts. Your supervisor will help you select the works that are most suitable for your interests and facility with Russian.
Topic 1: Realisms
Grigorii Chukhrai, Ballada o soldate (film)
Мikhail Kalatozov, Letiat zhuravli (film)
Vladimir Pomerantsev, “Ob iskrennosti v literature”
Mikhail Sholokhov, ‘Sud’ba cheloveka’
Andrei Tarkovskii, Ivanovo detstvo (film)
Abram Terts (Andrei Siniavskii), ‘Chto takoe sotsialisticheskii realizm’
Topic 2: Testimony
Lidiia Ginzburg, Zapiski blokadnogo cheloveka
Varlam Shalamov, Kolymskie rasskazy
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Odin den’ Ivana Denisovicha and selections from Arkhipelag GULag
Iurii Trifonov, Dom na naberezhnoi
Topic 3: City and Country
Fedor Abramov, ‘Dereviannye koni’
Natalia Baranskaia, ‘Nedelia kak nedelia’
Andrei Bitov. ‘Zhizn’ v vetrenuiu pogodu’
Marlen Khutsiev, Zastava Il’icha (film)
Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovskii, Asino schast’ie (film)
Kira Muratova, Korotkie vstrechi (film)
Poetry and songs by Bella Akhmadulina, Joseph Brodsky, Evgenii Evtushenko, Bulat Okudzhava, Robert Rozhdestvenskii, Andrei Voznesenskii, Vladimir Vysotskii and others.
Set Text 1
Venedikt Erofeev, Moskva-Petushki
Topic 4: Resistance
Sergei Dovlatov, ‘Kompromiss piatyi’ in Kompromiss
Abram Terts (Andrei Siniavskii), ‘Grafomany (iz rasskazov o moei zhizni)’, Liubimov
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, ‘Pis’mo s’’ezdu Soiuza pisatelei SSSR’, ‘Zhit ne po lzhi’
Vladimir Voinovich, Ivan’kiada
Songs by Aleksandr Galich
Topic 5: Speech
Viktor Pelevin, ‘Deviataia son Very Pavlovny’
Dmitrii Prigov, ‘Opisanie predmetov’
Liudmila Razumovskaia, Dorogaia Elena Sergeevna
Lev Rubinshtein, ‘Poiavlenie geroia’
Vladimir Sorokin, ‘Zasedanie partkoma’
Visual art by Erik Bulatov, Il’ia Kabakov, Vitali Komar and Aleksandr Melamid, Aleksandr Kosolapov, Andrei Monastyrskii, Viktor Pivovarov, and others.
Topic 6: Identity
Aitmatov, Chingiz. Belyi parakhod
Iskander, Fazil’. ‘Diadia Sandro i rab Khazarat’
Limonov, Eduard. ‘My – natsional’nyi geroi’
Makanin, Vladimir. ‘Kavkazskii plennyi’
Tolstaia, Tat’iana. ‘Sonia’
Ulitskaia, Liudmila. Sonechka
Daneliia, Georgii. Kin-dza-dza! (film)
Men’shov, Vladimir. Moskva slezam ne verit (film)
Poetry by Nina Iskrenko and Ol’ga Sedakova
Set Text 2
Liudmila Petrushevskaia, Vremia noch’
The following list includes Set Texts and background reading. Students are urged to buy and read both Set Texts during the summer before the course begins.
- Evgeny Dobrenko and Marina Balina, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Russian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
- Venedikt Erofeev, Moskva-Petushki (Set Text)
- Lipovetsky, Mark, Ilya Kukuj, Tomáš Glanc, Maria Engström, and Klavdiia Smola, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Soviet Underground Culture. Oxford Handbooks Online. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024.
- Simon Franklin, Rebecca Reich, and Emma Widdis, eds. The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.
- Stephen Lovell. The Shadow of War: Russia and the USSR, 1941 to the Present. Chichester, Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
- Geoffrey A. Hosking. The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union from Within. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992.
- Liudmila Petrushevskaia, Vremia noch’ (Set Text)
- Ronald Grigor Suny, ed. The Cambridge History of Russia: The Twentieth Century. Vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
The paper is taught through a combination of weekly lectures and fortnightly supervisions, with two lectures and one supervision allocated to each Topic and Set Text. All writing assignments are due 48 working hours before supervision. The schedule of lectures and supervisions is as follows:
Michaelmas Term: 8 weekly lectures and 4 fortnightly supervisions
Lent Term: 8 weekly lectures and 4 fortnightly supervisions
Easter Term: 4 weekly revision seminars and 2 fortnightly revision supervisions
For the SL6 Moodle site, please see here. The password can be collected from the course advisor.
Students are assessed by a choice of examination (Parts IB and II), Long Essays (Part IB only), or an Optional Dissertation (Part II only). These modes of assessment will be structured as follows.
The examination will be divided into two sections:
Section A: One essay or commentary on the Set Texts. Students are presented with a choice of one comparative essay question on both of the texts, one essay question on one of the texts, and one extract for commentary from the other text.
Section B: Two essays on the Topics. Students are presented with two questions for each of the six Topics. They may answer those questions using primary material from the other Topics, if they choose. All answers in Section B must refer substantively to works by two or more figures – these should primarily be works of art (literary, visual, dramatic, cinematic or otherwise), though certain significant essays from the period may be permissible upon consultation with the advisor. All answers in Section B must refer substantively to one or more written texts.
Students in Part IB may submit a portfolio of two Long Essays in lieu of sitting the examination. In Michaelmas and Lent Terms, such students receive three regular supervisions followed by a fourth supervision on a Long Essay plan that numbers no more than 1000 words. One of the two Long Essays must focus substantively on at least one of the two Set Texts, and the other must focus on the Topics. Students should consider in advance which regular supervision they will not attend and inform the course advisor accordingly, noting that the supervisions for both Set Texts fall аt the end of termtime; reading both Set Texts in the summer before the course begins will be particularly helpful in planning ahead. Those who have submitted both Long Essays will not receive supervisions in Easter Term.
Students in Part II have the option of submitting an Optional Dissertation in lieu of the examination. Such students are urged to attend all lectures and are entitled to eight hours of supervision on their Optional Dissertation over the course of Michaelmas and Lent Terms. Those who have submitted an Optional Dissertation will not receive supervisions in Easter Term.
Dr Rebecca Reich |
