218 



RUSSIAN LITERATURE l 



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During the last few years, especially since the revolutionary upheaval of 1905, 

 Russian literature has immensely increased in quantity and proportionately declined 

 in quality. If judged by extent of output only, it would appear to be in a most flour- 

 ishing condition. From the point of view of material profit to the producers and the 

 publishers, this could hardly fail to be the case when we consider the influences now at 

 work in educating the Russian masses and thus continually increasing the number of 

 actual and potential readers. As soon as restraint is removed, and the necessity of 

 instruction is once admitted for a vast population like that of Russia, most of whom 

 have hitherto been shut off from the advantages of printing, the reading public is sure 

 to grow with leaps and bounds, there as well as elsewhere. 



The pecuniary prospects of literature and the press generally in Russia are as brilliant 

 to-day as they were hopeless and despairing in the more or less recent past. Even 

 British capital has begun to seek profitable investment in Russian literary enterprises. 

 Book illustrators are also reaping the benefit of a parallel development of their par- 

 ticular art. All this, however, does not seem to improve the literary quality and 

 character of the production, in which, on the contrary, there is a noticeable deteriora- 

 tion, and, with one or two exceptions, the great bulk of it is no doubt destined to be 

 soon forgotten. The better class of Russian readers are tired of the group of infe- 

 rior pessimists and minor poets, who, having been flushed up on the tide of revolution, 

 have done nothing else but probe the social and political vices of the nation. The grow- 

 ing disgust for the new style of revolutionary and erotic literature was intensified by 

 the tragic death of Count Tolstoy, which reminded the Russians of the enormous con- 

 trast between the works of the modern favourites and the masterpieces of Tolstoy and 

 his early contemporaries. There was consequently a revival of interest in Tolstoy's 

 writings and a plentiful supply of posthumous Tolstoy literature, which threw into the 

 shade modern celebrities like Maxim Gorki, and Leon Andreyeff. As one critic ex- 

 pressed it, the appearance of each volume of Tolstoy's literary legacy was like a day of 

 glorious sunshine in a long period of depressing gloom. Two volumes of fresh stories, 

 which were not published during the Count's lifetime, probably because of his change 

 of views on art and fiction in general, made their appearance in 1911, including " A 

 Living Corpse," " The Devil," " Father Serge," and " The False Coupon." This 

 Tolstoy literature was further enriched by the reminiscences of the widowed Countess, 

 by the notes of the Count's former secretary, N. Goosieff , and by Tolstoy's letters cov- 

 ering the period 1848-1910, edited by P. A. Sergeyenko. 



Amongst the remarkable literary productions of 1910-11 were Our Crime by Radio- 

 noff , an act of indictment against the intelligent classes of Russian society for their in- 

 difference to the brutalisation of the lower orders, and Alexander the First, an historical 

 novel by D. Merezhkovsky, published in the Russkaya Mysl. This new work of 

 Merezhkovsky's is the result of a careful study, based on documentary evidence, of 

 the enigmatical personality of the Imperial " Emancipator of Europe " and of the 

 strange legend concerning his death. Another historical romance was published in 

 the Historical Viestnik under the title of Kolychevskaya Votchina by V. Kilshtet, treat- 

 ing of the epoch from the emancipation of the serfs and the Polish insurrection down 

 to the end of the reign of Alexander II. Attention may also be directed to Two Lives 

 and Days of Sedition, pictures of the downfall of Russian society, by Von Wiesen; the 

 dramatic poems Bekh Ulla and Bab, with reference to religious movements in Persia, 

 by Mrs. J. Grinevskaya; a love story, The Garnet Bracelet, by A. Kuprin; and Altar of 

 Victory by V. Brusoff. 



A great many descriptive accounts, memoirs and documents were published in 1911- 

 12 in connection with the celebration of the centenary of the national war against 

 Napoleon's invasion and the battle of Borodino. In 1910 the interesting announcement 

 was made that an unpublished work by the great novelist Turgeniev, called Life for 



1 See E. B. xxiii, 914 el seq. 



