Russian Literature ID Quiz

Red Cavalry, Salt

Isaac Babel, 1926 Capitalists smuggling salt Salt was key to survival because of food preservation Shortage of most everything and salt was sold on the black market Antisemitic woman who got shot at the end for being against the revolution These people are committing war crimes over some petty theft and because of the blinding ideology.

Red Cavalry, A Letter

Isaac Babel, 1926 Full of allusions To a very repulsive story about a manly communities of Cossacks that are horrifyingly brutal. "Breasts cut off from women.." Destroy a town Kills his own father and then his new "father" is the Soviet Union

Red Cavalry, Crossing the River

Isaac Babel, 1926 yesterdays blood and slaughtered horses found a room full of Jews murder comparison of death and everything to colors incredibly liberating and incredibly terrifying "Shoots two bullets in his eyes" coorelates to the blindness of the narrator Russians leave the dead on the table for a certain amount of time after death therefore leaving the dead body on the floor is normal He was killed by the Poles, he knew that the enemy

Isaac Babel (1894-1940)

Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel was a Russian writer, journalist, playwright, and literary translator. He is best known as the author of Red Cavalry, Story of My Dovecote and The Odessa Tales—stories from the life of Jewish gangsters from Odessa led by Benya Krik (prototype - Mishka Yaponchik[1]). He has been acclaimed as "the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry".[2] Babel was arrested by the NKVD on 15 May 1939 on fabricated charges of terrorism and espionage, and executed on 27 January 1940.

Koylma Tales

Shamalov 1960 Kolyma Tales is the name given to six collections of short stories by Russian author Varlam Shalamov, about labour camp life in the Soviet Union. He began working on this book in 1954 and continued until 1973 GULAG GULAG GULAG

Varlam Shamalov (1907-1982)

Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov, baptized as Varlaam, was a Russian writer, journalist, poet and Gulag survivor. He spent much of the period from 1937 to 1951 imprisoned in forced-labor camps in the arctic region of Kolyma, due in part to his having supported Leon Trotsky and praised the anti-Soviet writer Ivan Bunin.

Daniil Kharms

-Founding member of OBERIU (Association for Real Art) an avant garde literary/artistic group -Pseudonym chosen from Harms and Charms -Wrote children's literature -Arrested as a precaution and died in custody -Influenced by Zaum (beyond sense, creating new meaning beyond what makes sense) and Radix (short lived theatre focused on movement with no staged plays) -Absurdity, skeptical of rationality -Wrote the Man with the black coat

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)

Anton Chekhov was a physician, major Russian short story writer and playwright. Many of his short stories are considered the apotheosis of the form while his playwriting career, though brief, has had a great impact on dramatic literature and performance.

Vanka

Anton Chekhov, 1886 About a nine year old kid who writes a letter to his grandfather. The letter actually doesn't go to his grandfather but it is hopeful in its own way Vanka Alyakhin Konstantin Makarich

Kashtanka

Anton Chekhov, 1887 Liberalism will not prevail Story about class Respect and kindness will not precail over brutality and cruelty/communism A little dog gets separated from its master one day and is adopted by a mysterious stranger whose home is filled with other animals he is training as a circus act. When the goose dies, Kashtanka—rechristened "Auntie"—is promoted to replace the bird. During the opening night performance of the circus, when the dog appears onstage, she hears her old master shouting her old name and they reunited with the entire experience of her separation coming to seem like a dream.

Sleepy

Anton Chekhov, 1888 Girl who works in a house who kills the chef Displacement of peasant breaking of family ties Good and bad consequences of urban growth Religous ties -> the ikon Sleep deprivation -> hallucination -> killing the chef Varka

The House With the Mezzanine

Anton Chekhov, 1896 Painters story Story wants you to side with the artist Lyda send the owner away which loses happiness Disapperaing class of the landowner Class of landowners is ending

The Lady with a Lapdog

Anton Chekhov, 1899 This guy and girl fall in love with each other but both have significant others but end upleaving them and meeting all the time to hook up Going flagrantly around the traditional sense of morality Builds a case for divorce Love is a natural phenomenon A man becomes intrigued by the daily appearance of a woman walking her dog about whom nobody seems to know anything. He makes her acquaintance, discovers her husband is away while she rests in the resort town of Yalta and proceeds to have an affair. This is one of Chekhov's most anthologized stories primarily because it breaks with tradition by remaining objective rather than offering a subjective judgment on the morality of the adulterous affair and because of its surprising ambiguous ending which suggests that the two have yet to face the most difficult times in their relationship.

The Man With the Black Coat

Daniil Kharms 1905-1942 Can't find much about it but he was an absurdist. It discloses a little-known tradition of absurdism that persisted during the Stalinist period, a testimony to both the hardiness of the Russian imagination in the face of socialist realism and the vitality of an important cultural and literary tradition. Pushkin had four sons, all idiots. One didn't even know how to sit in a chair and fell off all the time. Pushkin himself also sat on a chair rather badly. It was simply killing: they sat at the table; at one end, Pushkin kept falling off his chair continually, and at the other end, his son. Simply enough to make one split one's sides with laughter."

Yury Olesha (1899-1960)

Yury Karlovich Olesha was a Russian and Soviet novelist. He is considered one of the greatest Russian novelists of the 20th century, one of the few to have succeeded in writing works of lasting artistic value despite the stifling censorship of the era. His works are delicate balancing acts that superficially send pro-Communist messages but reveal far greater subtlety and richness upon a deeper reading.

Envy

Yury Olesha, 1927 Ivan Babichev and Kavalerov join forces against Andrei and Volodya "Come to us and we'll feed you and do what you and do what you need, just join us in communism" Theme - "Who is Jocosta?" Oedipus is a tragic hero, being foretold he's son will kill him and bed with his mother Russian Educative Class - very small group of people capable to defy power Nikolai Kavalerov -Reduced to the position of a child "powerless" -Not in any way a hero -He doesn't like communism -Loves defying power -Wants emotions back -He has a huge sense of self -An individualistic drunk who hated andrei Anderi Babichev Ivan Babichev Makarov Vayla