An Obsession with History: Russian Writers Confront the Past

The author traces the role of Russian literature over two hundred years in creating and sustaining the notion of the singularity of their own history and of its relationship to the history of the outside world.The author describes the development of this tradition through an analysis of major works including Karamzin’s History of the Russian State, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. His analysis of this tradition has a dual purpose: to provide a window on the peculiarly Russian attitude toward history and to allow us to read some major works of Russian literature in a new light. The book will be of interest not only to Slavists, but to anyone concerned with the interaction between history and literature.