Russian literature: Quick Facts

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The father of modern Russian literature

One of the greatest Russian writers

Portrait of Leo Tolstoy with a long white beard, wearing a dark shirt and looking slightly to the side.

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Key People

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Ilya Ilf

Soviet humorist

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Yevgeny Petrov

Soviet humorist

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Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Zinovyev

Russian writer and scholar

One of the greatest Russian writers

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Russian author

Portrait of Leo Tolstoy with a long white beard, wearing a dark shirt and looking slightly to the side.

Leo Tolstoy

Russian writer

Babel, Isaac

Isaac Babel

Russian author

Aleksandr Pushkin

Aleksandr Pushkin

Russian author

Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Turgenev

Russian author

Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov

Russian author

Maxim Gorky

Maxim Gorky

Russian writer

Nikolay Gogol

Nikolay Gogol

Ukrainian-born writer

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Osip Emilyevich Mandelshtam

Russian poet

Lermontov, Mikhail

Mikhail Lermontov

Russian writer

Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov

American author

Pasternak

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak

Russian author

Lomonosov, Mikhail

Mikhail Lomonosov

Russian author and scientist

Anna Akhmatova

Anna Akhmatova

Russian poet

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

Russian author

Khomyakov, engraving by Ivan Pozhalostin, 1879

Aleksey Stepanovich Khomyakov

Russian poet and theologian

Vladimir Mayakovsky

Vladimir Mayakovsky

Russian poet

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) in 1876. Russian novelist and short-story writer. Also spelled Dostoevsky

Another Russian Literature Quiz

4:043 Dickinson, Emily: A Life of Letters, This is my letter to the world/That never wrote to me; I'll tell you how the Sun Rose/A Ribbon at a time; Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul

Famous Poets and Poetic Form

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) only confirmed photograph of Emily Dickinson. 1978 scan of a Daguerreotype. ca. 1847; in the Amherst College Archives. American poet. See Notes:

Poetry: First Lines

Undated photograph of Russian author Leo Tolstoy.

Russian Literature