Radislav Lapushin tracks Chekhov’s tortuous legacy through the Soviet period. While the Soviets attempted to co-opt Chekhov for their own uses, Chekhov also became, for many in the anti-Soviet intelligentsia, a democratic ideal, a moral authority, and an anti-authoritarian icon – a watchword, in short, for the ideologically impregnable.

Anna Akhmatova is a prominent presence in international canons of war poetry, yet her range and significance as a war poet remains underappreciated. Akhmatova is unique among Russian poets, given the Soviet emphasis on 1917 as historical watershed, in identifying 1914 in hindsight as the start of the ‘real’ twentieth century. This chapter situates Akhmatova’s tragic, patriotic view of war in its contemporary intellectual context, and in that of scholarship on gender and war poetry.It examines key lyrics, focusing on religious and pastoral motifs, and highlights Akhmatova’s distinctive approach through comparison with the poetry of her soldier husband, Nikolai Gumilev.Overall, it argues that the war marked an important transition in Akhmatova’s writing, allowing her to develop the characteristic blending of individual with collective voice – and ethical emphasis on memory and bearing of historical witness – that are commonly associated with her later work and which continue to resonate now.

The October Revolution in 1917 profoundly shocked the cultural ecosystem. The new authorities recast notions of freedom, of the arts, and of the public. Links between and among audiences at different levels that had thrived in the prerevolutionary cultural market were dismantled. Over time the government imposed strictures on culture requiring alignment with political directives. By 1934, the official policy of Socialist Realism was mandatory and compliance enforced by rewards and terror. The early years of revolutionary ferment yielded aesthetic innovation of the highest order, yet the mounting pressures took their toll on creativity. Writers, artists, and performers responded variously. Some took cover in works employing irony and in the (somewhat) safer terrain of children’s literature. By seeding children’s literature with values counter to those practiced by Soviet officialdom, selected writers and artists spread counter-values to a new generation. They worked with the guile of the fox, the flight of the firebird, and, perhaps, the recklessness of the Fool. By keeping alive Russian stories of wise Fools, sentient animals, and magical powers, their creators carried forward folkloric traditions barred from the reigning Socialist Realism. In doing so, they protected limited public space for artistic innovation.

The Russian avant-garde arose in an age of advertising, publicity, and celebrity culture. Across the world, advances in photography, film, and print were feeding images and ideas to publics fascinated by wealth and consumption. In St. Petersburg and Moscow no less than in the other capitals of Europe, artists, writers, and performers catered to new appetites for fashion and display. The juxtaposition of publicity and art implied a radical departure from the traditionally passive role of the audience, since publicity requires the participation of the audience. Increasingly, Russian culture was commodified. Images of literary giants appeared on candy wrappers and cigarette boxes; in cheap lithographs; and then in photographs reproduced on postcards, some carrying advertising on the back. The women of Russia’s cultural circles pursued increased agency and rose to fame in the exaggerated empowerment that was part of celebrity culture. The avant-garde of both sexes courted celebrity and adopted a spirit of playfulness as they abandoned figurative forms for abstraction. They challenged conventional ideas and brought a new force – humor – to the interplay between artist and audience. In so doing, they drew on a vein of comedy that existed in both the sacred and secular traditions.

During the reign of Russia’s last Tsar, Nicholas II (1894-1917), the advocates of freedom clashed sharply and frequently with the forces of order. The standing of the authorities suffered greatly with the humiliating loss of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. As the war was fought, domestic political unrest was also coming to a head. On “Bloody Sunday” in January 1905 hundreds of workers who had gathered to petition for better conditions and modest political reforms were shot down outside the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, opening a year of revolutionary protest and strikes. The era’s passionate political life forced writers and artists to confront anew how their art related to politics at home. Some joined the fray with striking works of political satire; others retreated to rarified aesthetics. Young rebellious writers under Maxim Gorky’s lead captivated the public with neo-Realism. Visual artists embraced experimentation; they and a group of writers took up aesthetic Modernism under the twin banners of Symbolism and Decadence. Innovations in music and dance – notably the Ballets Russes – found admirers at home and abroad. Avant-garde artists embraced humor and publicity, in the process introducing Russia to a new melding of art and celebrity.

The fox or vixen, a trickster of fable and folklore, is a sly survivor of life’s vicissitudes and the natural alter-ego of the Fool. Within the Russian fox ménage, it is usually the female, or vixen, who stars. After a period of relative quietude during the last decades of the old regime, the fox came into her own in the Soviet era. The animals from Russia’s rich tradition of fables resurfaced as prominent voices in early Soviet literature. Works intended for children offered stories and pictures of foxes. Authors and illustrators exhibited wiles in their lives as well as their works. Alexei Tolstoy featured foxes in his work, but more to the point, managed to stay in Stalin’s good graces when many of his peers fell. Both Tolstoy and A. M. Volkov, the author of the strange 1939 Wizard of the Emerald City, cleverly adapted already well-established foreign works. And the fox was not just for children. Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov let loose a fox in the person of their Ostap Bender. Readers could celebrate his wit and guile, as Russian émigré Andrei Sinyavsky noted in 1989 when he added Bender the Anti-Hero to his roster of Soviet foxes.