Böcker av Arnold McMillin

This book, first published in 2000, features analyses about and by some of the most important Russian writers of the 1980s, a period of great changes in the cultural life of Russia when the controls of Soviet communism gave way to a wide diversity of unfettered writing. A variety of critical approaches matches the diversity of Russian writers considered here. The book features David Bethea's theoretical discussion of the work of the outstanding critic and cholar Iurii Lotman and a fascinating extending interview with leading poet Ol'ga Sedakova. Several writers and works receive their first scholarly analyses in English, such as Sasha Sokolov's complex postmodern novel, Between Dog and Wolf, Elena Shvarts's poetry, and Zinovii Zinik's work. Aleksandr Zinov'ev's prose is subjected to a searching formal analysis. The book contains an essay on the literary environment of the Moscow poet Mikhail Aizenberg, and a highly controversial article that reviews Russian writing as an extension of imperialism. Writers who for various reasons fell into opprobrium during the 1980s include the Soviet village writers and the late Andrei Siniavskii (Abram Tertz). A survey of urban prose in the late 1980s looks into an uncertain future, while playwright Viktor Slavkin represents the best of contemporary Russian drama.

Spring Shoots introduces individually the early work of two score young Belarusian poets, all of whom began writing after the start of the present regime. This is the first such survey in any language, including Belarusian. All poetic illustrations are cited in the original and accompanied by English prose translations. The poets' work is presented in eight loosely thematic groups: the historical heritage, religion, protest at alienation and repression, use and defence of the language, the lyrical impulse, humour, performance poetry and the theme of writing itself and poetic inspiration. Also very important in these poems are the joys and tribulations of love. By using the Belarusian language, the poets are helping to save it from decades of erosion and official devaluation, so that their discussion of it is often poignant, particularly as language is a central part of the also suppressed historical heritage. Other types of verse such as humorous, lyrical or that for performance, are less central to the Belarusian situation, but the angry and bitter protest poems serve as perhaps a release valve, as small editions of poems are far less conspicuous than the expression of such feelings on the street, which always meets bitter reprisals.

Study of the Russian novel has been the greatest scholarly contribution of Richard Freeborn, and in this volume some of his former colleagues and pupils offer in homage new essays ranging from re-examination of classical texts to analysis of still-neglected twentieth-century works.

The authors include several well-known writers such as Aksenov, Gladilin, Zinik and Loseff as well as Soviet and Western scholars, and the result is both varied and surprising: in the light it throws on the Russian mentality, on the phenomenon of exile and on aspects of the West.