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In this article, Ilya Kliger describes the workings of "tragic realism" during the early to mid-1840s in Russia by engaging with the critical essays and letters of Vissarion Belinskii as well as with the first novels of Ivan Goncharov and Aleksandr Herzen. Kliger seeks to show that the concepts and forms produced by the authors standing at the inception of the realist tradition in Russia can be usefully seen as transpositions of the Hegelian theorization of modernity and of its privileged formal companion, the Bildungsroman. Seen against the background of Hegel's post-tragic conception of contemporary "actuality," these authors can be understood as developing a historico-formal paradox, a vision of tragic realism. Tragic realism grasps contemporary life in terms of destructive and irreconcilable collisions and presupposes the broader historiographie vision of Russia's anachronistic position vis-à-vis the Hegelian vision of modern life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with Leonid Andreyev's creative prose and the problem associated with its classification. The author of the article presents arguments that are at odds with those of literary critics who have classified/labeled Andreyev as an expressionist. She underscores that Andreyev had identified himself and his unique artistic method as "neorealism,” and that he had himself stated that this specifically self-chosen term stood for a combination of symbolism and realism. The author of the article then analyzes Andreyev’s writing method and she provides evidence found within Andreyev's works that contain/exhibit elements of symbolism and realism (albeit transformed in his original and unique writing/artistic style).

This article discusses Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of grotesque realism as influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche's idea of chaos and the manner with which it expresses the Dionysian associated with Russian religion. The book "Rabelais and His World," by Bakhtin, is analyzed for Nietzsche's influence. Also examined are the books "Thus Spoke Zarathustra," "The Birth of Tragedy," and "The Gay Science," by Nietzsche and Nietzsche's acceptance in Russia during the time Bakhtin was writing his seminal works.

Abstract: This article attempts to define trends in prose at the turn of the Millennium. Discussion focuses on the following issues in the context of “pluralist” postmodern aesthetics in Russia: ambiguity as multilingualism and its hero-intermediary, simulacra and homonymy, or the category of the “neo-real”, as Jean Baudrillard formulated it, in connection with stylization. Finally, it is maintained that the oversaturation of our contemporary culture with signs replacing reality has exhausted their potential “to mean” and invites the theme of Apocalypse as a last resort for producing meaning. Two ways out of this impasse seem to emerge in the mid-1990s: on the one hand, documentary genres; on the other, their opposite – the mythological novel. The aesthetic development of the 1990s seems, however, to have been impeded by the shrinking freedom of cultural expression in Russia. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]