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Russian Literature and Society

© Gail Giordano

Russian Literature covers an immense time span. Russia's history and the political forces that have run her country have been adequately displayed across time through the writings of her great authors. There has been many a great one, some of the most famous that are my favorites as well. Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Turgenev.

The book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Solzhenitsyn is a heart wrenching book, but ah how it displayed the 1940's and the work camps in Siberia. Very few Russian works are Very light - even their music has a heavier air to it.

Literature was the one way to get out and express the truth without worrying about too much of a retaliation from the governments. Russian authors were known for their lack of remorse and lack of discretion with regards to their works. They called it as they saw it, making them a prime enemy of the state, for a people who don't know the truth nor have the option to decide can be controlled simply by fear.

There was another prime reason that Russian authors wrote the way they did, most of their works contained some part of their lives and the oppression that they felt. The government much like the controversial books we have seen in the United States received Russian literature.

There is one primary difference between the way the United States receives books and the Russian government does. We have free speech they do not. Therefore books like Uncle Tom's Cabin or Mark Twain's books as much as certain people may not agree with them, the books are allowed due to the first amendment.

Russian authors did not receive that liberty, their books were subjected to the government and they had no rights. The truth behind the governments and even just the way they truly ran came out in the writings by Russian authors.

Anna Karenina by Tolstoy is a good example. Here high society was taken and shown for what it truly was; an empty nonfulfiling life that was full of parties but not necessary allowed to be human beings and to feel. The governments were known to persecute and run out of town the authors - but that never seemed to have dampened effect on their writings.

In the coming months I want to talk about the authors, the time period in which they wrote and the correlating history that goes with those books.

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