The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

58 The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

classics ceased to be lavishly subsidized and the boundary between “high” and “low” literature began to erode. Russian literary space openly welcomed persons and themes that had always been on the brink of taboo: detective fiction featuring state security personnel or the ruling dynasty or party; crime where the state is to blame; wars that Russia has lost or is losing (like Afghanistan and Chechnya); attractively snappy capitalists. And also, to be sure, explicit pornography, violence, and misogyny. Whereas the tsarist-era and Soviet canon held women’s rights sacred (and preferred salvational women to superfluous men), that prejudice is now gone. Instead we begin to see a partial return to the bawdy mixed prose of the eighteenth century, to wide-open (not Aesopian) satire, and to the amoral ethics of the folk tale. These and other narratives of the pre-Pushkin era are the subject of our next two chapters.