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: Identity
Chingiz Aitmatov, Dzhamiliia
Iskander, Fazil’. ‘Prints Ol’denburgskii’
Limonov, Eduard. ‘My – natsional’nyi geroi’
Men’shov, Vladimir. Moskva slezam ne verit (film)
Motyl’, Vladimir. Beloe solntse pustyni (film)
Petrushevskaia, Liudmila. ‘Slabye kosti’
Tolstaia, Tat’iana. ‘Sonia’
Ulitskaia, Liudmila. ‘Sonechka’
Poetry by Ol’ga Sedakova and Olzhas Suleimenov
Topic 5: 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 6: 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.
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.
The course handbook can be downloaded from the SL6 Moodle site.
This paper will be assessed by a 3-hour in-person written examination.
Prof Rebecca Reich |
