The seventh episode of the podcast is about “The Sad Detective” by Viktor Astafiev (1924-2001), published in 1986.
Did the increased openness under Mikhail Gorbachev (in power from 1985 until 1991) also have a downside? Absolutely! Some writers seemed to relish the idea of depicting Soviet society as being completely ravaged by alcoholism and domestic violence without offering a shimmer of hope for the future. An important pioneer of this “black wave” of Soviet literature was Viktor Astafiev who had made a name for himself with thick, colourful novels set in Siberia, but now seemed to adopt a new approach in his fiercely realistic urban novel “The Sad Detective”. Soon the novel became the focal point of a lively debate that involved critics and readers, liberals and nationalists, and signalled the return of anti-Semitism and Russian nationalism as entirely legitimate positions.
Sources used in this episode of "Scandal and Controversy in Russian Literature":
- Clark, Katerina. 2000. The Soviet Novel. History as Ritual, 3d edition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).
- Graham, Seth. 2000. “Chernukha and Russian Film,” Studies in Slavic Cultures, 1, pp. 9-27.
- Parthé, Kathleen. 2004. Russia’s Dangerous Texts. Politics Between the Lines (New Haven: Yale University Press).
- Parthé, Kathleen. 1992. Russian Village Prose. The Radiant Past (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
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