'Thirty years of lies': Portrayal of the media in the works of Dovlatov, E. Popov, Gorlanova, and Pelevin

This dissertation focuses upon how developments in Soviet and post-Soviet media may have affected literature and literary developments in Russia during the glasnost and post-glasnost years. To this end, this work will discuss two questions: (1) How are the media presented in the works of Soviet and Russian authors, and what does this presentation imply about the nature of the media in the Soviet Union and Russia both during and after the glasnost era? (2) Since each author's own struggle to get his or her voice heard by the media is an important theme in each respective work, how does the resolution of this theme reflect each author's own attitudes toward the media, and by extension, toward the regime which controls them?; While I will be discussing how political events have changed the concerns and goals of media interests, and how these changes have in turn affected literature as a whole, my choice of authors is based more upon their utilization of media forms within their literary works. Sergei Dovlatov's novel The Compromise directly focuses upon situations faced by the author during his time spent as a journalist for a Soviet newspaper in Estonia. Evgeny Popov's The Splendor of Life uses newspaper articles as a parallel to his own personal reminiscences. Nina Gorlanova's Confessional Days is also personal, as the author/narrator attempts to reconcile her life not only with the advent of glasnost but the bombardment of images presented to her by newly-free media. Viktor Pelevin's Generation P is, finally, a postmodern attempt to address the issue of a culture being threatened with annexation from the West, and how television has been integrated into the daily life of the Russian people.