Village Prose (Soviet Russian)

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

David Gillespie (University of Bath)
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Of all the areas of literary enquiry published in the Soviet Union following the death of Stalin, “village prose” is the one that most fundamentally challenged the myths and ideology on which Soviet society was built. Village prose was structured around contrast and opposition: old and new, village and town, female and male value systems, tradition and progress, stability and disruption, nature and industry, spiritual values and material needs, history and ideology. In all cases the former categories are favoured by the village writers, protesting against (and often damning) the latter. The opposition, however, runs deeper, serving to subvert authoritarian discourse and replace it with the people’s truth, based as it was on …

2228 words

Citation: Gillespie, David. "Village Prose (Soviet Russian)". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 July 2003 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1293, accessed 29 March 2024.]

1293 Village Prose (Soviet Russian) 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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