This book analyses the relationship between literature, history and politics in post-Soviet Russia. It explores the impact of the collapse of the USSR on Russian literature and culture and the changing content and reception of fiction on historical themes under Presidents Yeltsin and Putin. It discusses the value of various theoretical concepts, such as postmodernism, trauma, nostalgia, and the notion of discourse as power, in analysing post-Soviet historical fiction. The book shows that Russian society's confrontation with its past has remained one of the main themes of Russian culture during the period 1991-2006. Notwithstanding the gradual decline of the literature of sensational disclosure associated with Gorbachev's peresiroika, a more oblique investigation of many aspects of Russian and Soviet history and an interest in the philosophy of history have continued to be significant preoccupations of post-Soviet culture. Individual and family history continue to be explored in memoirs and autobiographical writings, while the history and destiny of Russia have been passionately debated in literary journals and the media, as Russians search for a new 'national idea' to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of communism. This study suggests that there is a remarkable continuity between post-Soviet literature and pre-revolutionary Russian literature and thought.

First published in 1986, Soviet Fiction since Stalin presents a comprehensive overview of the literature of the post Stalin period in the Soviet Union. The rapid advances in science and technology in these years are reflected in the themes of many of the major novelists - Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, Sinyavsky, Daniel and Grossman- and scientific subjects frequently offer a vehicle for the exploration of the wider socio-political, moral, and philosophical ideas. As the period advances, however, literature becomes the first medium in which to express mistrust of scientific advance, and hence, indirectly, of Soviet policy as a whole. Rosalind J. Marsh uses a broad definition of 'science' which enables her to cover topics ranging from de-Stalinization, nationalism, and anti- Semitism in science, to Lysenko and scientific charlatanism, the Soviet rejection of relativity theory and quantum mechanics, the atom bomb, and also such general problems as secrecy, careerism, and bureaucracy. The bulk of the book concentrates on the Khrushchev years but there is also plentiful discussion of more recent writing such as that of Zinoviev and Voinovich. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of Soviet literature, Russian Literature and literature in general.