Introduction: The Short Story as the Genre of Cultural Transition

Abstract

during the final decades of the twentieth century short-story criticism went from having to justify its existence as a field of study to being recognized as a prominent area of literary inquiry with its own critical canon. This collection contains some of the most illuminating critical articles treating the short stories that best represent the genre in twentieth-century Russian literature. This introduction focuses on two issues central to the subject at hand: it highlights the main points in short-story criticism and applies them to the Russian short story in particular. However, a definition of the short story is not my aim; rather, I will use others’ attempts to define the genre to explore its cultural and sociological function in the Russian context. Is there a specifically Russian short story? And even more to the point, is there something about the twentieth-century cultural and political development that accounts for the short story’s prominence in it?