Review Article

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.)......1August 1991 saw the stunning collapse of the Soviet Union and the rapid disintegration of the Communist party and all its institutions including those that controlled literature. Twenty years later in 2011, the market drives Russian book publication and Russian publishers systematically employ advertisement agencies and PR firms to promote their products. The Soviet claim to being the most country in the world has re -emerged in post-Soviet Russia as the countiy that consumes the most television programming. It is heavily ironic that since the fall of the Soviet Union, reading has become an almost irrelevant activity; prior to 1 99 1 , the act of reading was of tremendous significance since reading samizdat or tamizdat, or even difficult-to-obtain Soviet publications of fiction and poetiy, often represented cogent private and individual acts of opposition to the prevalent ideology. Twenty years ago, there were about 10,000 members in the bloated Union of Soviet Writers and the literaiy profession was profitable, prestigious, and privileged. Today, many writers are not closely affiliated with any union or association and most writers in Russia have to actively supplement their income since it is very difficult, just as in the West, to make a living solely through creative writing. For example, those writers whose works have been translated into various languages receive foreign royalties and invitations from abroad to lecture or make guest appearances. Others have worked for considerable periods and decent salaries at foreign universities (e.g., Tat'iana Tolstaia in the United States, Anatolii Kim in South Korea) before returning to Russia. Many writers work industiy jobs in editorial offices, some engage in ghost-writing, and some noted authors, for example Dmitry Bykov and Mikhail Shishkin, write works of serious alongside works of mass appeal that occupy what critic Sergei Chuprinin termed in 2004, the space of middle literature.2 In 1991, as a result of glasnost', Russian writing was just emerging from the rigours of Soviet-era censorship. Twenty years on, many writers lament the censorship imposed by the market economy and the whims of the marketplace in which has become just another commodity. Rosalind Marsh acknowledges this concern, but also nuances it, observing that: 'economic censorship' has had a profound effect on the choice of manuscripts which have been published and reviewed in Russia since the fall of communism, neither fiction nor literary criticism has been subjected to official political censorship [. . .].3 Possible reasons why control over is absent in Russia today, while control over radio, television, and the press is very much present, will be suggested below.While Russian is hardly dead, as Viktor Erofeev pronounced it in his celebrated and oft-referenced article of 1991, Pominki po sovetskoi literature [A Wake for Soviet Literature],4 it is transformed - indeed is constantly transforming - in an ongoing search for its place within Russia' s new consumerist and entrepreneurial reality. Russian twenty years after the Soviet Union collapsed is very much a living organism moving and stretching in multiple directions, in a state of constant motion, and changing even as this overview is being written. Authors are writing, competing for prizes, and, in every way, trying to adapt to a still-new political, economic, and cultural environment. While this state of change and diversity is seen as destabilizing by some cultural commentators, exhilarating by others, what is certain is that such continuous change is exceptional in a nation in which for centuries, stood at the centre of cultural life and was expected to play the role of prophet and omniscient commentator, and give effective expression to national ideals and identity. Two decades after the demise of the Soviet Union, in which played the aforementioned roles in highly significant ways, it no longer bears this burden so obviously or so willingly. …

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