Pridvorov, b. 1883), the Communist poet laureate, is no more than an able and sometimes witty writer of rhymed propaganda.
During the years of civil war and blockade (1918-21) Russian prose writers almost ceased from production and poetry ruled supreme. Of the "advanced" poetical groups, the Futurists were the most prominent. The Futurist movement began about 1912 as a revolt against the hieratic mysticism of the Symbolists. It united several fundamentally different tendencies, and there is little in common between its two principal representatives, Victor Khlebnikov (1885-1922) and Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-193o), besides the common desire to give poetry a more rugged and virile accent and to tear it away from the withering hold of traditional poetical associations. Khlebnikov was a recluse and a stammerer, a mole who lived, as it were, at the linguistic roots of poetry. His work is caviare to the general public, but highly appreciated by fellow poets. Mayakovsky was an open-air orator. Much of his verse is revolutionary propaganda. Though totally lacking in the "finer touch," it is intensely original and highly craftsmanlike. Boris Pasternak (b. 1890), unquestionably the greatest living Russian poet (principal book of lyrics, My Sister, Life, written 1917, published 1922) is externally connected with some aspects of Futurism, but in substance he is nearer to the traditions of Tyutchev and Fet. His poetry is marked by an absolute freshness of perception and diction combined with a tensity of lyrical emotion that is to found only in the greatest. His prose (Tales, 1925) is also of the highest order, and being concerned with the realities of the soul stands apart from that of his contemporaries. Next to Pasternak the most significant recent poet is Marina Tsvetayeva (an emigree since 1922), whose poetry is marked by an exceptional variety and richness of rhythmical imagination, and an exuberant vitality. Sergey Esenin (1895-1925) (q.v.), the favourite poet of the post-revolutionary intelligentsia, was at one time connected with "advanced" move ments, but in reality he is a poet of sentiment of an essentially "19th century" type. After 1921 poetry began to lose its ascend ancy. None of the poets who have come forward since then are of any very great significance, though the "proletarian poet" Vasili Kazin has a genuine gift of song, and Nicolas Tikhonov (1896– ) and Ilya Selvinsky (1899– ) are consummate and original masters of technique.
strongly under the influence of the "ornamental" style of Bely and Remizov, and of the "formalist" school of criticism, which insisted on the complete reduction of all literary facts to form. The most prominent of the "formalists" was Victor Shklov sky (b. 1893), a vivacious and clever critic, and the author of a very remarkable book of reminiscences of the War and the Revolution (A Sentimental Journey, 1923). The young "orna mental" novelists laid all their emphasis on style and formal originality, almost abandoning all pretence of narrative. The spirit of the Revolution expressed itself in their work in their treatment of mass movements. In the early novels of Boris Pilnyak (b. 1893) (q.v.) and of Vsevolod Ivanov (b. 1895) there are no individual characters, only vast movements of masses, crowds or peoples. Ivanov has overcome the limitations of "dynamism" and his later stories show more grit. The tales of Isaac Babel (b. 1894) are "intensified anecdotes" with a maximum of artistic concentration. He is a supreme master in the imagina tive treatment of slang and mongrel dialects, and the most perfect artist of the younger generation. His best stories are about the Polish War of 1920. Leonid Leonov (b. 1899) is a more old fashioned writer, related in tone and subject-matter to earlier masters, and full of sympathy for the underdogs of the Revolu tion. Other novelists tried to remedy the lack of narrative interest inherent in "ornamental" and "dynamic" fiction. Ilya Erenburg (b. 1891), who had been made famous by The Adven tures of Julio Jurenito (1922), a satire of Capitalist Europe, won still greater fame by crude novels of melodrama and adventure. Constantine Fedin (b. 1892) is a more serious writer; his novel Cities and Years (1924), a powerful story of War and Revolu tion, restored to a place of honour the ethical conception of human conduct, as opposed to the elemental dynamics of the masses. Since about 1925 "Soviet workdays" have replaced the civil war as the chief subject of fiction. Most of this new fiction of "Soviet manners" is not above the level of good journalism. Among those who represent Soviet life in a satirical light the most popular is Michael Zoshchenko (1895– ), but Sergey Zayaitsky is the only writer of this description to have shown real imaginative power. Other writers like Lydia Seyfullina (b. 1889), in a curious type of best-seller, try to answer the Soviet typist's demand for "uplift." Recently there has grown up a great interest in the historical novel. Those by Yuri Tymyanov and by Olga Forsch (b. 1879) are works of real and solid merit.