Russian Literature and the Classics attempts to fill a gap. To date there has been no book-length, systematic study of the impact of antiquity on Russian literature and culture. While by no means claiming to offer a comprehensive approach, the authors focus on various aspects of the influence which the Classics have had on Russian literature at particularly significant junctures - the beginning of the nineteenth century; the age of the great Russian realist novel; the "Silver Age"; Stalin's terror; the "Thaw" after 1956; and the period just before the collapse of Soviet society. In...