The desintegration of the USSR, the resulting release of censorship, and the related publication of earlier prohibited texts, as well as the new charakter of the book market entirely tranformed the shape of the literary field of the nineties. This thesis concerns itself with a specific segment of the professional literary production of this period. With its topic, this work aspires to contribute to the serious research of the little explored postcommunist period in the Russian literature. In order to assess and interpret the evolution of opininions in this period of time, the chosen method is the one of commented overview of literary criticism and of literary-theoretical texts published mainly between 1986 and 2000 in Russian publications (mostly in so-called "thick magazines"). The thesis focuses on studies interested in the work of the middle and younger generation of the Russian prose writers, and more precisely on studies concerning the structural aspects of the literary situation in the nineties. On the background of the specific cultural and social situation, the method of the ample commentary is an appropriate way regarding how to interpret the literary theorists' basis of thoughts and opinions, and at the same time how to affect these experts' relationship to the new tendencies in the...