ABSTRACT
The restructuring of the Russian literary canon in the 1980s, although a welcome and exciting development in itself, has hardly been a cause for wonderment against the backdrop of almost unprecedented political change. The canon has been de- and re-constructed many times during the last two centuries, and reputations have come and gone in even shorter order than in most Western countries. Although, like Sedakova and Shvarts, Zinik has received far less critical attention than canonical writers of the previous decade such as Evtushenko and Voznesenskii, he is now well respected by a new generation of readers in metropolitan Russia and has undoubtedly re-entered the Russian literary canon. Little helped by critics who, with rare exceptions, lag well behind the new development of literature, and unattracted by groups, the creators of new Russian literature bring diverse gifts to a post-Soviet generation of readers ready to respond to the new as well as to re-assess the literature of the past.
