Much of the previous scholarship on Russia's literary discourses of sexuality and eroticism in the Silver Age was built on applying European theoretical models (from psychoanalysis to feminist theory) to Russia's modernization. This book argues that, at the turn into the twentieth century, Russian popular culture for the first time found itself in direct confrontation with the traditional high cultures of the upper classes and intelligentsia, producing modernized representations of sexuality. This Russian tradition of conflicted representations, heretofore misassessed by literary history,...

This concise reader/anthology of Russian and Soviet erotic prose written between 1900 and 1940 consists of three parts: Silver Age writings, interwar emigre literature, and early Soviet fiction. It was not the author's intention to select the most accomplished works dedicated to the theme of sexuality and eroticism. Rather, the choice for the most part fell upon texts previously unavailable in English and thus less known to readers who do not read in Russian. In addition, these works give a good idea of how the "birth of the body" in Russian literature and culture actually happened and of the...