Historical Introduction

Part 1 of the book deals with changes in Russian literary historiography and secondary-school literary education in the post-Soviet years. I discuss shifts in the literary canon and trends in textbook writing, against the background of social and political developments in the country from the 1990s to the 2010s. As will appear, the changes that we see in literary histories and textbooks, and the debates that have taken place around the concept of literary history per se, serve as evidence of recurrent and dramatic turns in the treatment of the historical past (both distant and recent), the present-day situation, and the prospective future development of the country.