Epilogue | CU Experts

Overview

Abstract; The Epilogue discusses the fate of Soviet village writers in the 1990s and 2000s after the break-up of the Soviet state and the disintegration of the Soviet literary community. The economic and social collapse that followed the end of communism was devastating to writers and the literary world. When the moral and national revival they had long yearned for failed to materialize in the newly independent post-Soviet states, some village writers came to regret the breakup of the Soviet Union. Others continued to view it as a liberation from Soviet empire, while still others were ambivalent about the collapse. The disintegration of the Soviet Union led many writers to belatedly discover just how “Soviet” they themselves really were, even as the national ideology of village writers became a foundational part of the culture of the newly independent republics.