Reading Russian Literature, 1980-2024: Literary Consumption, Memory and Identity

This edited collection focuses on the nexus between literary consumption, memory and collective identity formation in Russia from the 1980s until today. It challenges perceived notions about the reduced social significance and identity-building potential of contemporary Russian literature. Drawing on a diverse set of primary source materials, ranging from memoirs, diaries and essays to fan art and BookToks, the collection seeks to do justice to the diversity of an enormous reading public that is often routinely referred to as the ’Russian reader’. The case studies explore the reading habits and self-understanding of very different audiences that are dispersed along regional, gender, generational and technological divides. In doing so, this collection examines both the continuities and shifts in the multifaceted relationship between literary consumption, memory and identity during the profound and ongoing transformations in Russian society and its literary landscape.

Otto Boele is Associate Professor in Russian Literature at Leiden University, The Netherlands. He teaches 19th century literature, post-Soviet culture, and Russian film. He is the author of The North in Russian Romanticism (1996) and Erotic Nihilism in Late Imperial Russia (2009). He is co-editor of Post-Soviet Nostalgia (2019).

Dorine Schellens is Assistant Professor in German and Russian Literature and Culture at Leiden University, The Netherlands. Her research focuses on intersections between contemporary Russian and (East-)German cultural history. She is the author of Kanonbildung im transkulturellen Kontext (2021) on the reception of Moscow conceptualism, and co-editor of Literaturkontakte (2018).