Slavic Languages and Societies Commons^™

Spectre Of Justice: Russian Reform In The Courtrooms Of Dostoevsky And Tolstoy, Abby Moore

Senior Theses

The Great Reforms of Alexander II are regarded as transformative policies in the history of Tsarist Russia, drastically changing the empire’s social and political fabric. The judicial reforms of 1864 in particular addressed longstanding issues within the existing criminal justice system, yet they also liberalized the institution at large. Following in the West’s footsteps, the reforms introduced an unprecedented level of democracy into Russia’s courtroom. Among the critics of these changes were renowned authors Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy, both of whom used the realm of fiction to explore their respective concerns with reformed Russian jurisprudence. Both authors bring distinct …

Russian Civic Criticism And The Idyllic Dream In Ivan Goncharov’S “Oblomov”, Cassio De Oliveira

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Nikolai Dobroliubov’s and Dmitrii Pisarev’s reviews of Ivan Goncharov’s novel Oblomov have gone into history as exemplars of Russian civic criticism. Their main argument centers on the eponymous protagonist’s seeming inability to exit his lethargic condition, which they interpret as a symptom of the Russian status quo at the time of the Great Reforms. In the present article, I argue that the case of Oblomov demonstrates the limits of the civics’ mimetic criticism. The dominant chronotope of the novel, namely the idyll, indicates that Oblomov is not in essence a novel about the hero’s inability to change (which would presuppose …

Writing Outside The Soviet Canon: Aleksandr Kozachinskii's "The Green Wagon" As Roman A Clef And Odesa Memoir, Cassio F. De Oliveira

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

This essay analyzes Aleksandr Kozachinskii’s 1938 Russian-language novella “The Green Wagon” as a roman à clef and exemplar of the Odesa Myth that has been unjustly neglected in literary scholarship. Reasons for the neglect of “The Green Wagon” include the historical context of its publication, between the Great Purges of 1936–1938 and the outbreak of World War II; Kozachinskii’s untimely death; and the conventional interpretation of the novella that reduces it to a fictionalized account of Kozachinskii’s friendship with Evgenii Petrov in Odesa during the early Soviet period. Against such a reductionist reading, and on the basis of recent archival-based …

To Whom Did Pushkin Write? The Narrator-Reader Friendship In Eugene Onegin, Tatum Grace Hall

CMC Senior Theses

In this thesis, I argue that in his novel in verse, Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin transcends the traditional narrator-reader hierarchy to foster a sense of friendship between himself and his reader. I suggest that Pushkin’s desire for friendship with his reader necessitates a keen awareness of his and his reader’s collective engagement within the novel. If Pushkin seeks friendship with his readers, he must treat them as friends. Consequently, the reader’s role in Eugene Onegin is elevated to that of Pushkin’s intimate. In my analysis, I identify three methods by which Pushkin successfully fosters a sense of overlapping experience …

"I Am Not Alive": A Bionian Reading Of Life And Death In Balzac's Le Colonel Chabert And Tynianov's Podporuchik Kizhe, Andres Meraz

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

This essay investigates the themes of life and death in Balzac’s novel, Le Colonel Chabert (1832), and Tynianov’s novella, Podporuchik Kizhe (1927). In these works, life and death are as much socio-political and legal constructs as they are organic or ontological states—that is, the chronological, biological beginning and ending of a “life.” In other words, life and death become conceptual spaces into which one may enter, or from which one may be excluded. Additionally, this essay asserts that while the approach taken in one text may to be a kind of conceptual inversion of the approach taken in the other, …

I Return My Ticket, Caroline Caldwell

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

This project serves to open up an accessible way to introduce people to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s masterpiece novel, The Brothers Karamazov. Questions around human nature and the problem of evil are enduring and I have found more peace in the works of Dostoevsky than anywhere else. I know, however, that Russian literature and long novels in general are incredibly intimidating, so I chose to follow in the footsteps of Dave Malloy and his work Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 to create an approachable and engaging avenue to consume Dostoevsky in a more palatable fashion. Knowledge of other cultures …

Introduction: Scotland And Russia Since 1900, Anna Vaninskaya

Studies in Scottish Literature

Introduces the project "Scottish-Russian Cultural Relations since 1900," based at the University of Edinburgh, the series of related symposia in Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen, and its extensive web-site of translations and other resources, and provides a brief narrative of cultural interactions between Scotland and Russia in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including such key examples as the Russian presence at the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1901, Korney Chukovsky's account of visiting Scottish troops in 1916, and the the Scotland-USSR Society's welcome to the Russian Burns translator Samuil Marshak and Burns biographer Anna Elistratova during the International Burns Festival of 1955.

Ideology In Literature And Literature As Ideology: Totalitarian And Reactionary Appropriation Of Resistant Texts, Huntley Hughes

Master’s Theses

This thesis seeks to explore the means by which nominally or potentially resistant texts are appropriated into violent or exploitative political structures for propaganda and profit. In the first chapter two pre-soviet Russian novels closely associated with the radical tradition are examined, through the lens of literary analysis, in order to uncover the ways in which ideologically egalitarian revolutionary movements can degenerate into authoritarian regimes. The second chapter is concerned with a Welsh text, How Green Was My Valley, which, despite being concerned with the conditions of the Welsh mining class, utilizes the narrative form of childhood recollection to insidiously …

A Clash Of Fictions: Geopolitics In Recent Russian And Ukrainian Literature, Yvonne Howell

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

When the vast, multinational Soviet empire collapsed in 1991, the geopolitical structure it had struggled to maintain for most of the 20111 century - often by means of brutal repression and forced remobilization of entire populations - proved itself in the eyes of many to be fatally out of sync with the epochal norm of the nation-state. By the end of the 18th century, people in many parts of the world had begun to "imagine themselves" as nations and to organize politically into states whose primary function would be to protect, nurture, and (in a kind of Romantic feedback loop) …

[Introduction To] Epic Revisionism: Russian History And Literature As Stalinist Propaganda, David Brandenberger, Kevin M. F. Platt

Bookshelf

Focusing on a number of historical and literary personalities who were regarded with disdain in the aftermath of the 1917 revolution - figures such as Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, and Mikhail Lermontov - "Epic Revisionism" tells the fascinating story of these individuals' return to canonical status during the darkest days of the Stalin era. An inherently interdisciplinary project, "Epic Revisionism" features pieces on literary and cultural history, film, opera, and theater. It pairs scholarly essays with selections from Stalin-era primary sources - newspaper articles, unpublished archival documents, short stories - to provide students and …

Life Into Art: Solzhenitsyn’S Bread Of Life, Ruth Trimmer

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

We, Eugnen Zamiatin

OER Main

A seminal work of dystopian fiction that foreshadowed the worst excesses of Soviet Russia, Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We" is a powerfully inventive vision that has influenced writers from George Orwell to Ayn Rand.

In a glass-enclosed city of absolute straight lines, ruled over by the all-powerful 'Benefactor', the citizens of the totalitarian society of OneState live out lives devoid of passion and creativity - until D-503, a mathematician who dreams in numbers, makes a discovery: he has an individual soul. Set in the twenty-sixth century AD, "We" is the classic dystopian novel and was the forerunner of works such as George …

The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky

OER Main

The murder of brutal landowner Fyodor Karamazov changes the lives of his sons irrevocably: Mitya, the sensualist, whose bitter rivalry with his father immediately places him under suspicion for parricide; Ivan the intellectual, whose mental tortures drive him to breakdown; the spiritual Alyosha, who tries to heal the family's rifts; and the shadowy figure of their bastard half-brother, Smerdyakov. As the ensuing investigation and trial reveal the true identity of the murder, Dostoyevsky's dark masterwork evokes a world where the lines between innocence and corruption, good and evil, blur, and everyone's faith in humanity is tested.

Translated from the Russian …

The Lower Depths, Maxim Gorky

OER Main

"The Lower Depths" is considered one of Maxim Gorky's most masterful plays, and an exemplar of Russian social realism. The play first premiered in 1902 at the Moscow Arts Theatre, and focuses on a set of impoverished Russians living in a shelter and struggling to handle the harsh realities of their lives.