Literature

    The crime rate in Russia since the 1980s has been on the rise. Crime and corruption has manifested itself in various forms in Russia as it indeed has in many other parts of the world. The collapse of communism and the post-perestroika transition has impacted the economic as well as social fabric of Russia. Disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 has left each of the several nations of the federation tottering and struggling hard to reconcile internal strife and cross border hostilities.  Added to this is the menace of rampant corruption, unemployment, poverty and shortage of food. The instability and lack of amenities has pushed many towards crime and corruption. The working classes have been worst affected by this change their accepted way of life and activities have undergone a complete transformation and relating to the new, bizarre way of life often becomes a difficult task.

    Organized crime is lucrative business in Russia today and the propensity of foreigners doing business in Russia to bribe their way through red tape or any other procedural glitches encourages this climate of malfeasance. Transitioning from a command economy to a free market open economy is not easy, particularly when the whole mechanism of governance is inept and not structured to enforce law and order efficiently.  

    The greatest challenge in front of the Russian government is to control terrorism, drugs and arms trafficking, black marketeering and illegal immigrations. The issue of corruption at high levels needs to be dealt with firmly as well. Organized crime, such as the Russian mafia, has penetrated deep into the countrys economy and apathy for crime in the Russian psyche. The tacit support of politicians and bureaucrats to the criminals makes it very hard for such crimes and terrorism to be tackled effectively.  Russia is in the middle of purging itself of these vices and finding a semblance of democracy. The current Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, has initiated an anti corruption drive and certain changes in the Interior Ministry including reducing the number of police personnel to be able to enhance the salaries and prevent corruption.    

    Russian literature mirrors the changes that its society has undergone over the past couple of centuries. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the writers felt justified in criticizing the political embargo that the communist party had inflicted on the freedom of expression. The horrors of Stalins rule, the brutal suppression of any voice of dissent and the deportation to Siberian gulags and concentration camps provided rich material for writers to focus on. With the setting in of  the thaw  after Stalins death (Morelli, 261) and later the period of glasnost left the writers in search of a worthy cause to pit their talents against. We can see a decided shift in the kind of literature produced in Russia over the last few decades. The slant is more towards crime fiction and thrillers away from classical literature. People prefer to read avant-garde writers like Peeving, Bakunin, Kerensky and others who are not preoccupied with heavy ideological and thought provoking themes and are experimenting with form, language and styles.

    Russian Writers of the Twentieth Century
    Classical literature produced in twentieth-century Russia had an important role to play in making Russian philosophy, ideology and treatment of human issues popular all over the world. The writings of the Great Russian writers like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Pushkin and Turgenev had the power to move people and reform society. Every aspect of human emotion is treated with sensitivity, poise and refinement. Suffering and unrequited love were common themes for novels and works of literary art in Russian literature of yester years. Fyodor Dostoyevsky was in particular fond of exploring suffering as a means of atonement and has used this theme in works such as Notes from Underground and Crime and Punishment. His novel The Brothers Karamazov deals with themes of spirituality, doubt and faith in God and human free will. Christianity and Christian symbolism also find place in the works of Dostoyevsky and Leo Tolstoy.

    Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer considered to be one of the greatest novelists of all times. His masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent 19th-century Russian life and attitudes. He attempted to depict Russian society realistically and focused on the follies and foibles of man. He also drew a very clear sketch of the Russian peasantry. Like Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy was also preoccupied by Christian symbolism. Even though War and Peace and Anna Karenina are voluminous novels, he also popularized short stories as a medium of artistic expression.

    Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was Russias most celebrated short-story writer and playwright.     He introduced the technique of stream-of-consciousness which later became popular in Europe.  His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers. His short stories described, intimately and with self-deprecating humor, the life and times of contemporary Russia.

    The treatment of human suffering as a mechanism of deliverance underwent a subtle change in the twentieth- century literature. It was used more as a tool to express evil as was exhibited by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his book The Gulag Archipelago. In this massive narration Solzhenitsyn talks about the suffering that prisoners were subjected to in concentration camps and gulags in Stalins Russia. It has an auto-biographical element as Solzhenitsyn uses his own experiences and eye-witness accounts to the horrors perpetrated (Maheshwari). In similar fashion the treatment of unrequited love is dealt with differently in an epistolary novel called Zoo or Letters Not about Love by Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky. As we see that even though some of the themes or broad ideas remain the same the way they have been treated by writers of different eras has undergone substantial change.

    Mechanism of Russian Society as demonstrated in Post Soviet Literature
    Post Soviet era literature has seen the popularity of the short stories and writers like Victor Pelevin, Vladimir Sorokin, Tatyana Tolstoya and Lyudhmila Petrushevskaya have come into prominence. Women writers are also making a decided mark in this field. The other interesting development is the emergence and growth of detective novels and crime thrillers as a popular and accepted genre of literature. Writers like Aleksandra Marinina, Boris Akunin and others have become widely popular (Munin).

    Study of Sorokins Work
    Vladimir Georgievich Sorokin, post-modernist Russian writer and playwright, was part of the Moscow Artists Circle also known as the Moscow Conceptualists. He rebelled against literary traditions and rejected the function of language in symbolic communication. Conceptualists tried to invalidate the role of language by creating  hyper-reality  (a term used by Philosopher Jean Baudrillard) by using objects that did not represent any ideas and used language which did not convey any meaning.

    The Moscow Conceptualists employed several ways of isolating their words from any meaningful context (Kustanovich). Sorokin believed that history, literature and language influenced the thought and expressions of men and did not allow any scope for subjective freedom to appreciate a work of art. To demonstrate this theory, he deliberately obliterated any context and followed the technique of bipartite discourse so that the reader would not have any references to fall back upon and be influenced in his interpretation. Sorokin used language to create  clichs  (Kustanovich), reinforcing his belief that art was representative of only art, and language too was representative of itself alone.

    The Conceptualists did not expect any emotional or ideological response from their readers.  Their purpose was to find an alternative pattern of discourse based on random words and clichs that did not convey meaning and could not be contextualized. Conceptual art and texts constitute a critical reflection of Russian society and explored the Soviet metaphor representative of the society and political conditions during that period in history. The Russian conceptualists took upon themselves the responsibility of interpreting works of art and society by their own standards analysis and explanation of the society and its norms had till then been solely in the domain of the Communist party.  Conceptual art and writing in the Soviet was subjected to strict ideological censorship and more often than not the work of these writers was misinterpreted as political affront and gimmickry. The conceptualists wanted to break away from the shackles of Communist monopoly.

    Sorokins work embodies the main tenets of art in the post-modern era and reduces the role of the author to that of a mere scribe who lays no claim to influence the reader with any kind of logic or method. He was powerfully influenced by the conceptualism practiced in the west and admits that western conceptualism  struck him with the simplicity of its idea of conceptualism.  (Kustanovich) Sorokin is perhaps the most prolific writer who has tried to undermine the principles of conventional Russian literature and free it from the oppressive control of the so called custodians of society. In his imitable style Sorokin creates words, phrases and dialogues that have no communicative purpose. To many Sorokins writing is sacrilegious and utterly profane as he attempts strenuously to undo what centuries of traditional Russian literature had achieved in trying to interpret Russian society in the context of Russian history. His work like that of other conceptual writers is a product of the circumstances that were present in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and the 1980s. The socialist strong arm developed and drew strength from the political climate in the depths of Russian society away from public glare. Russian literature and its creators were able to perpetuate this bias, this leaning towards the socialistic ideology and as a result achieved a great deal of social and political clout. Sorokin rebels against this oppressive system and his work is an attempt to reverse this trend and create a non-representative and truly subjective alternative medium of expression.

    In his novel The Queue (translated from the Russian original, Orcherd), Sorokin has implemented the principles of Conceptualism by introducing discourse loaded with  senseless clichs  (Kustanovich). The Queue is dialectical in its structure, divided into several unconnected fragments of conversation. The first half or more of the book contains snatches of conversations between different people who are forced to spend long hours with each other for a purpose that is unclear with no introduction, explanation or note from the writer. Reminiscent of Becketts Waiting for Godot, it is a commentary on the society and lives of people under the Soviet regime. The unending queue symbolizes the perennial shortage of supplies and the author at no point quite discloses what the purpose of the long wait was. The people have disjointed conversations about the tardiness of the women who were dispensing with the items for sale. The merchandize itself seemed to change from one conversation to the other. At one time folks in the line talk about the cabbages being stale then they talk about buying shoes and then about some article of clothing. So the theme of the conversation keeps shifting and the reader is never sure of the context of the dialogue. The people have been queuing up for two full days without much being achieved. The general atmosphere of frustration can be gleaned from following the trend of the various incoherent dialogues. The reader gets to hear conversations between people in different walks of life for example, there is a conversation between two scientists though quite without context and various caustic comments about the inefficiency of the people dispensing the stuff, derisive remarks about the ineffectiveness and corruption of the police and the uncouthness and aggression of the Georgians etc. Sorokins purpose of exploring the various ways of illustrating rhetoric and dialogue is duly demonstrated in this book. The writer refuses to concede that the motif of the book was to critique Russian society. He seems satisfied in having been able to use clichs and words to communicate a style of discourse divorced from the traditional story telling framework.

    As the reader proceeds through the maze of asynchronous and fragmented conversations the character of Vadik emerges as somewhat central to the scheme. We learn that Vadik seems to be motivating people to shrug off their ennui to pool money and buy vodka which is consumed heartily by the people standing in the queue, an action that leaves him in a drunken state and he has to sleep it off in the middle of a grassy patch. We also discover that Vadik has shared an unsuccessful relationship with a girl called Lena, who ditches him for a more cultured and affluent man. At the end of the book Vadik is able to get what he had been queuing up for through the good offices of Lyudhmila with whom he shares an intimate relationship. Lyudhmila works in a warehouse and is able to procure for Vadik the object of his desire, something the reader remains unaware of till the end.

    Sorokins style is abstract and the use of the deconstructionist technique has earned him the reputation of one who deliberately moves away from the traditional prose writing styles. In his attempt to create an audience who would have the capacity to appreciate an idea or concept without prior references or context, he uses language loosely without a logical flow or obvious interpretations. He is satirical about all conventional norms and sometimes uses monosyllablic structures to convey complete conversations and ideas. Sorokin has even been criticized for writing almost pornographic material, as his writing gets very graphic at times ( Literature in Post-Soviet Time ).

    Sorokin does not overtly criticize Russian society or literature but his writing is subversive in itself. His satirizing of contemporary Russian administration and society serves to discredit them without having to resort to open criticism. However, some of Sorokins work has been banned by the Russian government for being inflammatory. One of his recent works, for instance, can be viewed as political criticism A Day in the Life of an Oprichnik describes a dystopian Russian society in 2028, complete with a Tzar in the Kremlin and a  Great Wall  separating Russia from the rest of the world.

    Victor Pelevin and his Works
    Victor Pelevin won the Russian Little Booker Prize in 1993 for The Blue Lantern and Other Stories, and was featured as one of the  best young novelists  by the New Yorker in 1998. Pelevin, another post-modernist writer from Russia, uses surrealism and ambiguity in a combination of fantasy and glimpses of science fiction to satirize the post modern Russian society. He is influenced by Buddhist philosophy to which he was exposed during his visits to South Korea and finds it liberating (Liukennen  Pesonen).

    In his writing style he employs Kafkaesque techniques to deliberately keep his writing impersonal and give the reader the freedom to interpret the text in their own light. He consciously avoided direct dialogue between the writer and the reader for this same purpose. He was struck as a teenager by the absence of writers rationale which added to the inexplicable theme in Mikhail Bulgakovs The Master and Margarita. One of Pelevins favorite themes is to explore nebulous connection between the living and the dead, a theme that he has used in The Blue Lantern.     This book contains eight short stories which are strange but  entertaining  commentaries on everyday Russian life during the glasnost period ( Annotated Review , 26). Pelevin, like Sorokin, does not concern himself directly with Russian society and its corruption. But through his use of satire, black humor, the Surreal and the Bizarre, Pelevin makes important, critical observations on contemporary Russian society. His preoccupation with death is reflective of the condition of Russian administration and his anxieties over it.
Female Presence in Russian Literature

    Contemporary female writers also have a major role to play in this regard. Most crime and detective fiction in the Russian markets today is written by women (Koromova, 4). Alexandra Marinina, whose real name is Marina Anatolyevna Alekseyeva and who like Soretsky was also in the police, was one of the first female writers of detective novels. She was described as the  Russian Agatha Christie  (Koromova, 4). Marinina too reveals the corrupt side of the Russian police force in her novels, using her personal experience. Cherny Spisok is one novel where she depicts the corruption in the police and in literary circles in Russia.

    Another one of Marininas characters, Anastasia Kamenskaya or  Natsya  is another well-developed character. She is intellectual, effective and yet possesses frailties that make her human. One can easily relate to Natsya as her character and relationships unfold throughout the series of novels (Koromova, 4).

    Marininas novels are marked by an optimist tone which is almost absent in contemporary Russian literature. Even though she describes corruption, crime and often great tragedies, she retains her hopeful outlook on life. Her novels are so popular in Russia that they have been made into successful television series.

    Marina Serova is another name worthy of mention here. Although relatively new on the Russian literary scene, Serovas contribution is significant. She is the first Russian writer to introduce a new type of protagonist the woman super-agent. Her heroines are private eye detectives, body-guards, secret service agents and so on (Koromova, 6). Like in Soretsky, there is an undercurrent of deep patriotism in the depiction of these efficient, professional women and their exploits against crime and corruption in Russia.

    Darya Dontsova is another popular female Russian writer. She has a light, humorous style and uses readers latent desires to flesh out her characters placing them in strategic, despairing  situations, thereby making it easier for the public to identify with them (Koromova, 7). Her unique style of writing the  ironic  detective story, the surprising twists and turns in her plot and her effective characterization make her a popular choice among Russian readers. She manages to comment on the criminal world in a satirical, humorous manner and tries to restore the publics faith in the police force (Koromova, 8).

    Among the more serious women writers, one must mention Maria Arbatova. In her short story  My Name is Woman , Arbatova presents a grim representation of the life women lead in Russia and of the appalling condition of medical facilities there. As she waits for her abortion, the writer is told by a more experienced woman that there was no anesthetic used and that shed be lucky to get a shot of Novocain (Arbatova, 48).

    Arbatova talks not only about the depressing situation of erstwhile Russian society, she also makes subtle comments on Russian literature.

I snapped at people like a soldier just back from the war and read the classics to make the baby an intellectual. The classics turned out to be full of horror stories,  however, and whatever I started reading someone was sure to die in childbirth after a while  (Arbatova, 51).

In these few lines Arbatova manages to show what the present medical facilities for a woman looking for abortion are like, and also that these conditions have prevailed for generations. The classics in Russian literature have also recorded the complete apathy of the government and medical institutions to the plight of women in need of medical help.

    Tatyana Tolstaya is another woman writer of note. In her non-fictional work Pushkins Children, compiled over ten years (Eder, 19), she presents her account of the transformation Russia underwent with the collapse of the  Iron Curtain.  Alma Guillermoprieto describes the work as  spinning fury, emitting words like sparks, enraged, saved from choking on the absurdities she Tolstaya has been called to witness only by the irresistible need to laugh at them  (Guillermoprieto, vii).

    She invests her writing with extreme emotion and a  poetic exactness of image  (Eder, 19). Influences of George Orwells Animal Farm and Aldous Huxleys Brave New World are clear in her dystopic, jaundiced view of Russian society and government. This is especially evident in her novel Slynx, which is written as a collection of tableaus (Eder, 19). Pushkin s Children is an unapologetic, bitter chronicle of life and times during Russias conversion. Tatyana Tolstaya calls Boris Yeltsin  a great Russian dolt , describing him thus

 A president can be gotten rid of only by destroying his country, his house, his people. Yeltsin understood this. And he acted accordingly. His whole book is a confused, inconsistent, incoherent, evasive, but ultimately understandable and even partly truthful story about how he, Yeltsin, rose up against Gorbachev, did battle with him, vanquished him, ravaged his kingdom and deprived him of EVERYTHING. And then became Gorbachev himself. And lost.  (Tolstaya, 143)
Anna Politkovskaya s A Russian Diary is another decisive non-fictional work by a woman author. It was published posthumously in May 2007, after Politkovskaya s murder in October 2006. Politkovskaya was a reporter for Novaya Gazeta, who became a popular face in the media following her report on the second Chechen war. The book is a comprehensive account of the collapse of the Russian government under Putin focusing on the critical period in Russian history of 2003 to 2006. Politkovskaya interviewed and interacted with families who were destroyed because of the siege of Beslan in September 2004 (Reid, 183).

Poignant and grim, the book takes the reader through the ordinary person s take on the disastrous governance of Putin. She suggests a massive movement to change the situation as Reid demonstrates
 Anna Politkovskaya concludes with a more generalised what is to be done Tackle poverty, end the disgraceful neglect of health care provision and the environment (at one point she draws attention to the appallingly low life expectancy in Russia, 58.5 years). Initiate a national campaign against alcoholism and drug addiction. End the war in the North Caucasus. Fix the humiliating social welfare system, which barely allows a person to survive, with no prospect of living a fulfilled and dignified life.
(Reid, 183)

Politkovskaya s own murder is a grim reminder of how repressive the Russian government still is on any person or persons speaking out against it.

Other women writers of note are mentioned in the collection Nine of Russias Foremost Women Writers and include the likes of Olga Slavnikova, Natalaia Smirnova and Lyudhmila Ulitskaya.

    Crime in the Popular Fiction in the 1990s
    In the 1990s, life for the working-class Russian was hard. Falling prey to endless corruption and turmoil, the average man or woman had to struggle to survive. Life as one knew it had changed drastically after the Soviet Union collapsed and the poorer classes were left bewildered and ill at ease with the new clime.  In these harsh times, light and entertaining fiction was a welcome relief from ones daily troubles. Low quality, Russian translations of Western popular fiction invaded the markets (Koromova, 1-2). Cheap popular fiction of this sort gave people a solution to dealing with the new present and presented them with ways of finding success in their professional lives.

    These books often depicted horrific crimes as everyday reality, claiming to show what the present had become. They were not part of high literature but they appealed to people because of their sensationalist, radical views. One of the most prominent writers in this field was Danil Koretsky. Koretsky, who writes even today, is a senior police officer and holds a teaching position at the Police Academy in Rostov. Through his books, Koretsky created the imaginary provincial town of  Tikhodonsk.  A morally aware writer, Koretsky uses experiences from his own life to describe the various kinds of criminals in contemporary Russia starting from the bottom rung of petty criminals and their ilk to more sophisticated ones  (Koromova, 3).

    Through his books Koretsky takes his readers on a tour of these various sorts of criminals. He shows them how bribing the bureaucracy works how the previous generation of thugs work on their own principles that defy Law and the new ones who, being inexperienced of life in jail, operate on their own set of rules.

    Unlike other pulp fiction at this time, Koretsky uses more considered characterization to make his plots effective. In Antikiller for example, his hero Lieutenant-Colonel Korenev, also known as  the Fox  is a man who is deeply troubled in his private as well as professional life his colleagues and superiors being of the corrupt, contemptible sort. Koretsky manages to show us the seedy side of Russian bureaucracy without compromising on the characters integrity. Korenev is a sympathetic character and the readers recognize his yearning for what is correct and his fight against corruption (Koromova, 4).

    Post-Soviet Russian Film
    Early films in Russia were considered mainly as means of propaganda. In the 1920s, film-makers and theorists like Eisenstein used various devices to convey their ideological beliefs through their movies. Eisenstein, for example, made the use of  montage , which are basically a series of shots that are not linked temporally or spatially, but by a latent thread of significance almost an intellectual link. For example, in his film Strike (1925), Eisenstein uses montage of the images of two children playing against the striking workers being attacked by the police to contrast the situation and to highlight a certain loss of innocence and justice. Eisenstein does this repeatedly contrasting the workers with farm animals being slaughtered the attackers with acts of savage destruction all to underline the brutality of what was being done by the Soviet government. Eisenstein considered the purpose of montage and film to be the bearers of radical, Communist ideas. His contemporaries too considered film a means of showing their audience what was right, and pave the way to a brighter future (Beumers, 1).

    But after the Soviet Union s collapse, a disconsolate bleakness set in, leading to the phase of the  chernukha  or  that which is made black.  The new directors offered neither consolation nor an answer to all of Russia s problems. They believed that things were to be despaired at and would remain so. It led to a redefining of the  Russian Idea  (Beumers, 4). Film-makers, writers and artists are trying to break away from the older, false constructions of Russia s history and sense of nationhood. Major changes began once Nikita Mikhalkov was elected the chairman of the Russian Federations  Film-Makers  Union in 1997 (Beumers, 4). Mikhalkov seeks to subsidize the production and distribution of films to recover losses that the film industry began to make because of the  chernukha.  People had begun to prefer lighter material like soap operas instead of the bleak, pessimistic movies that were being made by the Russian film-makers.

    V Dvizhenii or In Motion is a 2002 film made by Filipp Ianovksii dealing with the life and relationships of Sasha Gurev, a successful journalist in Moscow. The movie revolves around Sashas frustrations in friendship and love. He is not on speaking terms with his girlfriend Vera, and consequently has two short affairs with Lena and Olga. Sashas quest for true love and identity is reflective of the larger quest that every Russian caught in this generation is compelled to undergo at some point. Ianovskii also makes profound observations on the artificiality of the visual image. Photographs, the camera, eyes symbols that are traditionally associated with reflecting the truth are shown to be mere tools of deception. In a self-reflexive moment, Ianovskii breaks the 180 degree rule that conventional films adhere to and points out to the viewer that this after all is a movie, and like all the other above-mentioned instruments, is a fallacy. Through the portrayal of Sashas repeated failures in finding true love and the theme of the falsifying eye, Ianovskii indirectly comments upon the decadence that has crept into contemporary Russian society.

    Anna Lawton in her book Imaging Russia 2000 Film and Facts talks about how the collapse of the Soviet Union affected the film industry in Russia. She explains that in the last thousand years of its history Russia had never been a democratic state. Those who expected Russia to turn into a democracy after the union collapsed were inevitably disappointed, because  capitalist democracy  in Russia was not a  natural  state (Lawton, 2). All European influence that was found in Russian art and literature was primarily the work of Peter the Great because of whose forceful westernization of Russia, there grew a generation of Russian intellectuals who had dual personalities. Russian by birth and yet influenced heavily by European ideals. The quest of identity, that is such a recurrent theme in the Russian arts begins again.

    Lawton talks about how contemporary Russian films depict this change and how it affected present-day law and order in Russia. Citing Alexander Zeldovichs Moscow (1999), Lawton claims that several Russian films in the 1990s depict Moscow as the  dehumanizing big city par excellence  (Lawton, 111-112). Shopping malls, glitzy restaurants and casinos, night-clubs all add to this view of Moscow as the new urban, mechanized center.

    Reading Moscows synopsis is an exercise in disbelief. The characters have relationships with two or three people simultaneously, betray each other, get tortured, and even get killed at their own wedding (Lawton, 113). The purpose is not to joke, however. The movie makes a point of how even after the collapse of the union, the legacy of the oppressive Soviet system lingers. The new capitalist system is just as  brutish  and violent. The movies jarring cinematography and ironic soundtrack add to the nightmarish feel of the film. Patriotic Russian songs are used in inappropriate contexts, the scenes are shot against the decadent night lights even the obsessive loose morals of the protagonists is a commentary on contemporary Russian society and its uncontrolled degeneration.

    Another movie, Limita, made by Denis Evstigneev in 1994, also shows Moscow to be an inhuman, unfeeling place. In this movie also violence of the mob and ultimate death of the innocent protagonist is depicted. There is a deeply cynical tone to the movie but the director claims that these cynical, selfish and mercenary youngsters were better than those before who promised the happiness of millions without delivering anything but misery (Lawton, 119).

    Several movies in the 1990s deal with the theme of violence rampant among the Russian youth. Of these films, Luna Park, made in 1992 by Pavel Lungin, is notable. The movie revolves around the activities of a young gang who are dedicated to exterminating  Jews, homosexuals, vagrants and Coca-Cola drinkers  (Lawton, 126). The chilling storyline of violence meets with a happy end however as the two main characters migrate to the Russian Far East in their quest, again, for their true identity and a new life.

    We observe therefore this new brood of intellectual film-makers who use dark humor, satire and literary allusions (like Alexander Khvans Duba Duba which refers to Stanley Kubricks film A Clockwork Orange) to criticize the violence and criminality present in modern Russia, especially in the urban youth. The present-day film-makers are also deeply critical of the corruption and criminality that were rampant in Soviet Russia and seek to rewrite history as they know it. Unlike Eisenstein, they are not driven by ideological motives but a profound need to find the true identity of Russia.    

    A detailed study of post-modern Russian literature and the impact of crime and corruption on it, reveals the emergence of various genres of creativity in the field of art and literature. The most prominent among them is the use of satire. Language is often deconstructed and proved to be quite dysfunctional at times. Not all writers use explicit criticism to highlight the rise of crime and corruption in Russia for instance, Sorokin and Pelevin refer to it in subtle, bizarre ways, allowing the reader to form her own judgment, while writers like Tatyana Tolstaya express themselves in much plainer terms, making no apologies for their criticism of the Russian administration.

    Post-modern Russian fiction is marked by the infiltration of corruption, present in the real world. The deplorable state of administration, health facilities and society in general, have been the target of direct and indirect censure.

    The emergence of women popular writers and detective novels in contemporary Russia is also an interesting aspect of this period of literature. Shaped by various sociological factors, Russia s reading audience is precipitating more and more towards crime fiction, sensationalist writing and thrillers in general. This is a marked deviation from the likes of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Pushkin. Women writers have taken the forefront in catering to this audience and there are a number of prolific female authors who now churn out detective novels and thrillers in great volumes.

The study also reveals that there is a very strong rejection of tradition and conventional ways of writing that is present through most post-modern writers. Writers like Sorokin have emphasized time and again that they want to start off on a clean slate, removing from the public memory, previous literary traditions. They deconstruct language to convey the pure form of their message, stripped of all ideologically-charged lessons. This is at a stark contrast from classical Russian writers who used their political leanings to criticize and influence society. Film-makers like Eisenstein too were guilty of using their political ideologies to influence their art, their audience, and ultimately to try and control society. But Eisenstein and his ilk have found their match in the films of the 1990s which criticize modern Russian society and look to a wider, international audience in an effort to relocate Russian identity.

Post-modernist writers remove all cultural contexts from their work. They want their readers to form their own opinions, interpret their work in their own, unique way without being compelled to take one side against the other. And because it has been translated so widely and profusely, Russian literature has found a huge audience around the world. Russia can no longer remain behind the Iron Curtain, thanks to the efforts of these writers and artists.