Adventure Narratives in the Early Soviet Union

In the early 1920s, Soviet writers and literary theorists were convinced that adventure fiction held the key to developing a new kind of narrative. The call for a "Russian Stevenson" (Lev Lunts) profoundly impacted the theory of prose and different notions of the literary hero. It also led theorists like Shklovsky to write dime novels and convinced writers of various backgrounds to explore Soviet topography in a new light, harnessing the synergies between imperialism and adventure. Despite the inherently anarchist nature of adventure and its bourgeois offspring, the magic of adventure found its way into socialist realism under different guises, demanding recognition and resisting neglect, especially in the case of socialist realist film.

This book offers a critical historical reconstruction of the early Soviet adventure craze and its lasting popularity in socialist realism. It also offers innovative theoretical propositions for a philological analysis of adventure fiction that arise from this unique historical context.

Riccardo Nicolosi is full Professor of Slavic Literatures at LMU Munich. His research focuses on the literatures and cultures of Russia and the Soviet Union and South Eastern Europe from the eighteenth to twenty-first centuries. His latest publications, which explore the rhetorical and narrative interfaces between literature and science, include: Degeneration. Literature and Psychiatry in Late 19th Century Russian Culture (in Russian, 2019); and Born to Be Criminal. The Discourse on Criminality and the Practice of Punishment in Late Imperial Russia and Early Soviet Union, edited with Anne Hartmann (2017).

Brigitte Obermayr is full Professor of East Slavic Literatures and Cultures at Potsdam University. Her research focuses on the literatures and cultures of Russia and the Soviet Union from twentieth to twenty-first centuries: avantgarde, theory of literature and culture, unofficial late Soviet literature and culture, and the political in literary discourse. She is editor of Dmitrii Prigov’s lyric oeuvre (facsimile edition, forthcoming), and her recent publications include the monograph Datumskunst. Datierte Zeit zwischen Gegebenem und Möglichkeit (2022) and the anthology Phänomenologische und empirische Kunstwissenschaften in der frühen Sowjetunion, co-edited with Aage A. Hansen-Löve.