ABSTRACT
Marshall Berman alerts us to the significance of Andrei Biely's Petersburg to the modernist project and to the canon of twentieth-century literature. 1 Written in 1913—16 the novel expresses both the failure of the 1905 revolution and its enduring success and creativity in providing what Trotsky described as the majestic prologue to the revolutionary drama of 1917. 2 This it does by exploring the relationship between the son of an imperial officer and a member of the underground who become embroiled in an attempt on the life of the officer. As the narrative unfolds and confusion mounts the two drift into the distinctly modern thoroughfare of Nevsky Prospect which generates a 'new surreality: a vision of itself as a primal swamp in which the anguished modern individual can merge and submerge himself, forgetting his personality and his politics, and drown'. 3
