ABSTRACT
Zamyatin, Bulgakov, and Platonov – writers of dystopian fiction – are included in the Russian canon of the twentieth century proposed by Igor Sukhikh in the volume of essays he published under the title Books of the Twentieth Century (Knigi XX veka, 2001). It is a small canon that comprises only seven more writers, among whom are Chekhov, Gorky, Nabokov, and Fadeyev, but not Ostrovsky, Gladkov, or Sholokhov. Of course, Sukhikh’s canon represents a subjective selection. Yet the difference from official Soviet literary history is too striking not to notice. The history of Soviet Russian literature published by the Soviet Academy of Sciences in three volumes in 1958-61 (Istoriya Russkoj Sovetskoj literatury) mentioned Platonov only once, as a war correspondent, while Bulgakov received three brief mentions, and only Zamyatin was treated slightly more elaborately though without any particular appreciation of his work.
