Developed as a reader for upper division undergraduates and beginning
graduates, From Symbolism to Socialist Realism offers broad variety of
materials contextualizing the literary texts most frequently read in
Russian literature courses at this level. These approaches range from
critical-theoretical articles, cultural and historical analyses,
literary manifestos and declarations of literary aesthetics, memoirs of
revolutionary terrorism and arrests by the NKVD, political
denunciations, and "literary vignettes" capturing the spirit of its
particular time in a nutshell. The voices of this "polyphonic" reader
are diverse: Briusov, Savinkov, Ivanov-Razumnik, Kollontai, Tsvetaeva,
Shklovsky, Olesha, Zoshchenko, Zhdanov, Grossman, Evtushenko, and
others. The range of specialists on Russian culture represented here is
equally broad: Clark, Erlich, Grossman, Nilsson, Peace, Poznansky,
Siniavskii, and others. Together they evoke and illuminate a complex and
tragic era.