The '80s.—The '8os were a period of gloom and reaction in the political and social sphere. There was a feeble renascence of aesthetic values and of poetry, but the verse of the favourite poets of those years, Semen Nadson (1862-87) and Alexey Apukh tin (1841-93), which well reflects the general atmosphere of depression, is of very mediocre quality. The novelists of the '8os had many estimable qualities but little creative originality. The most notable are Vladimir Korolenko (1853-1921), a clean, opti mistic idealist with a sense of poetry and a gift of humour; Alexander Ertel (1856-1908), whose novel The Gardenins is an admirable piece of sober and vivid realism ; and N. Garin (pseud. N. G. Mikhaylevsky, 1852-1906), the author of a deservedly popular trilogy recounting the childhood and youth of a typical intellectual. Vsevolod Garshin (1855-88) was a more disturbed and metaphysically inclined spirit strongly influenced by Tolstoy. As a writer of short stories he is the immediate forerunner of Anton Chekhov (186o-19o4) (q.v.). The atmosphere of Chek hov's best work is eminently representative of the gloom and depression of the disillusioned and unemployed intelligentsia. His narrative technique has its roots in the older tradition, but he carried it to that flawless perfection which has made him the favourite of the English intelligentsia. His influence on litera ture was small. He has had imitators, but no creative followers.
The tremendous figure of the old Tolstoy overshadows all the younger generation of the '8os. His new ethical Christianity, it is true, affected the following generation almost exclusively by its negative attitude to all cultural values. But the indirect influence of that great personality cannot be exaggerated. The works in which he embodied his religious experience, The Confession and The Death of Ivan Ilyich, have nothing to compare with them for essential religious quality in modern literature. While his new narrative style, which rejected all "superfluous detail" and con centrated on the most generally human problems meant the end of the rule of purely "social" realism.
The '90s.—Soon after 1890 the depression of the '8os was fol lowed by a general reawakening of life. In politics a new spirit was introduced by the advent of Marxism, and a general rise of revolutionary optimism. In literature the meteoric appearance of Maxim Gorki (pseud. of Alexey Peshkov, 1869-1936, see GoRKI), was the greatest event of the later '9os. Other writers by his side continued the old tradition, among whom we may mention Alexan der Kuprin (1870-1938), author of The Duel (1905), a "social" novel of army life, and of a number of well-told short stories. Gorki's successor in the popular favour was Leonid Andreyev (1871-1919) (q.v.), whose work shows an obsession with the vanity and emptiness of all human values and pursuits. His best stories, problem-stories of death and sex are modelled on Tolstoy's, but he early succumbed to a crude "modernism" and his style degenerated into a succession of insincere cliches. Andreyev's outlook was shared by many writers who came into prominence about the time of the failure of the first revolution (1906-07).
The most famous of these was Michael Artsybashev (1878-1926), the author of the notorious Sanin (1907, Eng.. trans. 1915), a drearily didactic novel that preached the gospel of complete obedi ence to sexual impulses, in a style unintelligently aped from Tol stoy. S. Sergeyev-Tsensky (b. 1876), another pessimist, is a much more genuine writer, and the master of an individual style. His novel Movements (1 91 0) is one of the most powerful stories of dying and death written since Ivan Ilyich. Ivan Bunin (b. 1870) (q.v.) may also be classed with the pessimists. His most important works, The Village and especially Sukhodol (1912), give an impressive picture of the spiritual decay and cultural poverty of the peasantry and provincial gentry of central Russia before the Revolution. Numerous novelists practising a more or less "modernized" realism came up in the years preceding the World War. Two deserve mention: Ivan Shmelev (b. 1875), whose story That which happened (1921, Eng. trans. 1926) is per haps the best Russian story inspired by the War; and Boris Savin kov (pseud. V. Ropshin, 1879-1925), author of The Pale Horse 1909, Eng. trans. 1915), a striking revelation of the terrorist mentality.
Chekhov's innovations in dramatic technique carried to its logical end the anti-artificial and "anti-theatrical" realism of Turgenev and Ostrovsky. Gorki and Andreyev attempted to imitate his plays, but failed to master their inner, "musical," construction which alone makes them what they are. Andreyev also wrote "modernist" plays which are nothing but a succession of rhetorical cliches, and crude symbolism.
The "religious-philosophic" movement had its roots in the Christianity of Dostoyevsky and in the gnostic idealism of Vladi mir Soloviev (1853-1900). Soloviev, a brilliant dialectician and polemist, was not a creative philosopher, but his influence was very great. As a writer he is best remembered, apart from his mystical poetry, for his last work, Three Dialogues on War, Prog ress and the End of the History (1900, Eng. trans. 1915), an apocalyptic treatise in the form of a brilliantly witty society conversation. Of his numerous followers we need only mention Father Paul Florensky, a writer of extraordinary subtlety and sophistication, and Nicolas Berdyaev (b. 1874), an impulsive thinker, more stimulating than profound. A very different kind of philosopher was Vasili Rozanov (1856-1919), one of the greatest masters of modern Russian prose. By rejecting what he called the "Gutenberg" style he made his Russian as flexible and spontaneous as spoken language. He was a convinced enemy of Reason, in theory as well as in practice. His religion was mainly a religion of sex and procreation, but he had a deep emotional sympathy with the traditions of Russian Christianity. One of his most characteristic books, Solitaria (1912), has been trans lated into English (1927). Leo Shestov (b. 1866) is also an irrationalist, but in his war on Reason he uses the weapons of his enemy with consummate skill. He has an intimate affinity with Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy (Eng. trans. Anton Chekhov, 1916; All Things are possible, 1920).