The Classic Russian Novel

The classic Russian novel comprises the major Russian novels published between 1830 and 1880. They form a body of writing in the genre that can be shown to have certain specific characteristics that we nowadays think of as “Russian”. These works are classic not in the sense of any “classic-romantic” opposition, but in the straightfoward sense of being accepted as standard or definitive both within the framework of Russian literature and in terms of its influence. They are the works of Turgenev, Tolstoi, and Dostoevskii and their immediate predecessors, or near-contemporaries, Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol’, and Goncharov. In short, barely more than half-a-dozen men of outstanding genius, born in the 30 years between 1799 and 1828, created what we can now regard as the Russian novel. In the case of Tolstoi and Dostoevskii their achievement has become traditionally so associated with perfection in the genre that it has earned the Russian novel the distinction of being considered in relation to classical norms of the Homeric, of Attic Tragedy, of Menippean satire, the medieval mystery play, and so on. Their novels have come to be regarded with the same esteem as the classical works of world literature and for this reason alone deserve to be treated as classics in their own right.