Crisis of the Avant-Garde in Russia.

This chapter of the book Contextualizing Transition: Interviews with Contemporary Russian Writers & Critics presents an interview with critic Mikhail Berg about Russian literature in the 1990s. According to Berg, the most interesting facet of the literary and artistic scene is that the traditionally dominant poetic trend is now obsolete. He added that the transformation of the original conceptualist authors from underground artists to establishment figures has simultaneously been reflected in the accordance to these authors of a level of international recognition. Berg believed that the literary scene had an overly demanding and critical attitude to life and creativity.