Comment by perfunctory
9 hours ago
I am genuinely curious why Russian literature is so popular in non-Russian speaking world. How do you wake up one day and decide to read Crime and Punishment? How do you find out about Russian literature in the first place? Recommendation from a friend, marketing in your favorite book store, school? Could somebody shed some light
Actually USSR pushed a lot of soft power and spent real money behind it. Especially the authors whose narratives didn't directly violate the narrative of the Party.
Leftist parts of society looked up to USSR a lot, and a lot of humanities professors, teachers all over the world were left-leaning, and promoted these books as Russian culture.
This is one factor, and doesn't explain the whole thing, of course.
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48673777. Neither our family nor I ever leaned towards the Party or any form of Leftism, but books are always kosher in our culture.
Dostoyevsky was massively popular way before the USSR. Nietzsche and Freud were huge admirers. His book sold well in Europe in his lifetime. Same with Tolstoy. Sincerely doubt the USSR soft power moved the needle in any meaningful sense.
> Actually USSR pushed a lot of soft power and spent real money behind it. Especially the authors whose narratives didn't directly violate the narrative of the Party.
Do you have any sources for that? I'd like to read about it.
Well it is kind of an integral part of the classic european literature canon. Certain novel genre's were invented by Russian writers, say, Tolstoy's epic novels.
So the question really is how does one find out about classic writing overall? Outside of school?
BTW, calling that an epic novel is a stretch. Actually great Russian writers like Gogol (surprisingly, Dead Souls is a poem, in prose) and Pushkin (Captain's Daughter is neither novella or novel) had difficulties fitting into Western genres of fiction. I'm sure there are more examples.
Well, Crime and Punishment is often taught in US high schools. Or at least was back in the 1980s. During the Cold War there was a lot of interest in Russian literature in general in part because in the bipolar world they were seen as "the other civilization" that we needed to understand if we wanted to avoid nuclear war. You'd think these days people would be more into Chinese literature but except for the Three Body Problem series, I haven't really heard of many Chinese books becoming popular here.
Russian lit was never part of my highschool reading. Freshman year was Greek classics and Shakespeare, sophmore year was more Shakespeare and Romance. Junior year was classic American lit, and senior year was Norse mythology and british lit. I diverged from my friends and decided to take the non-AP English classes junior and senior year. I would have been reading non-fiction in AP English Language and books by Bronte and Dickens for AP English Literature. I'm don't think the IB courses covered Russian lit either although my school didn't offer IB.
My liberal arts classes in college didn't involve Russian lit either. My freshman year English I and II classes were very unserious, we read Philip K Dick and a (somewhat distasteful) book by the current governor of Maryland. I could have taken a Russian lit class but instead decided on Appalachian studies which was surprisingly interesting and probably helped shaped some of my politics. I did read A Day in the Life while I was taking summer classes. Admittedly, I was on Adderall at the time which led to me reading at a rate that matched when I was a kid and was tearing through books faster than I could get to the library. I listen to a lot of audiobooks now and miss when I had the attention span to actually crack a book (or at least use a kindle). I've got a copy of Crime and Punishment in my queue but I've been reluctant to start it.
The same was as literature from anywhere else. Some authors are famous and you grow up knowing about them: I know about great Russian authors the same way I know about great authors from anywhere. They also get referenced and quoted by authors in other languages. Playwrights get translated and performed.
Less famous authors? Everything you say and more - again, just like any other books and author.
I was a precocious teen - reading philosophy and history in addition to fantasy and science fiction - and came across Crime & Punishment in a local bookstore that I purchased paperbacks and Dungeons & Dragons books. The back sounded interesting and the book looked deep and philosophical so I purchased it. Despite it not being a great translation I found the book and topics covered really interesting and went on to read most of Dostoyevsky works.
This is just the past and the modern propaganda nothing more.
those books are considered as classics because they deal with different aspects of the human condition which haven't changed significantly. they also give a different and valid intepretation / perspective on these "eternal topics", which are unique and discernible enough from their counterparts from other countries and cultures.
> because they deal with different aspects of the human condition which haven't changed significantly. they also give a different and valid intepretation / perspective
so do the other literary traditions I guess. What's so special about Russian. It seems as if the interest in Russian literature comes at the expense of the others.
absolutelly – I didn't mean to say that other literary traditions don't have their valid perspective on the same issues. my best guess is that russian culture is on the surface understandable / relatable from a western readers point of view but differs in nuances, which makes it "exotic" but not unrelatable. I don't think that this comes at the expense of the others – you're free to read chinese classics after all, but I assume that the threshold of "getting it" will be much higher since most people in the west are not accustomed to the radical different culture which it is based upon.