An Obsession with History: Russian Writers Confront the Past - Paperback

by Andrew Baruch Wachtel (Author)

The author traces the role of Russian literature over two hundred years in creating and sustaining the notion of the singularity of their own history and of its relationship to the history of the outside world.The author describes the development of this tradition through an analysis of major works including Karamzin's History of the Russian State, Tolstoy's War and Peace, and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. His analysis of this tradition has a dual purpose: to provide a window on the peculiarly Russian attitude toward history and to allow us to read some major works of Russian literature in a new light. The book will be of interest not only to Slavists, but to anyone concerned with the interaction between history and literature.

Back Jacket

The author shows that, contrary to European practice, Russian writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries--including Karamzin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Solzhenitsyn--felt it incumbent upon them to produce works on historical themes.