Between cultures: Third-wave Russian fiction in Russian and English

More than 150 writers emigrated from the Soviet Union between 1971 and 1983. This dissertation examines their literary activity in emigration through 1985.;Chapter One gives information on the third-wave authors and the contexts in which they worked during the 1970s and early 1980s. Through a discussion of the authorial models represented by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Siniavsky, and Eduard Limonov, it illustrates important issues about the constitution of authorship in the emigre community. During the 1970s many publishers outside the Soviet Union and many writers and readers on both sides of the border seemed to value some literary works in part because of their unacceptability to the Soviet authorities. This situation caused many Russian writers to develop unrealistic expectations regarding freedom to publish in the West and/or the real possibilities of attaining fame and fortune through literary activity in the West.;Chapter Two describes the real publishing possibilities of which third-wave writers availed themselves between their emigration and the end of 1985. It describes briefly the major publishing venues that were available to writers of Russian-language prose fiction in the West, and the extent to which works by third-wave authors were made available to a broader audience through translation into English. The emigres' fiction is seen as a continuation and expansion of so-called unofficial Russian literature, with the addition of the theme of emigration and with a greater emphasis on book-length forms brought about by Western market conditions.;Chapter Three considers, in part, the way in which the major Anglo-American review media have covered third-wave fiction. It shows that the author's and publisher's reputation greatly influenced the probability that a work would be reviewed. In addition, this chapter highlights problems of interpretation connected with the ambiguity of the emigre authors' intended audience.;The overview of fiction published by third-wave Russian writers in emigration shows that emigration or exile did not silence the authors or deprive them of an audience, but rather opened new possibilities in terms of publication opportunities for Russian-language texts and for texts in translation.