Politics and prose

Russia's official divestment of communism vividly illustrates ideology's capacity to shape history, make mock of geographies, and reverse ostensibly sacrosanct trends and traditions. The turmoil and trauma of the dozen-odd years spanning perestroika and the post-Soviet era have reconfigured the map not only of Russia, but also of recent women's fiction. A reader versed in women's prose of the 1970s and early 1980s now contemplates a radically altered fictional landscape — within a society that currently gives short shrift to Literature and other high culture genres consecrated by the Soviet establishment. With Literature no longer a supreme category of ideological and cultural self-definition, its practitioners have forfeited status and state subsidies. They now compete for a readership with authors of pulp fiction and translations of western bestsellers in a book market driven by customer demand. Not ideological rectitude, but the muse of solvency presides over publishing, film production, recordings, and stage performance.