It might have been expected that the obliteration of Communist Party control over the publication of literature in the late eighties and early nineties would result in a burgeoning of new talent, and that a multitude of young writers, freed of the restrictions that had frustrated and crippled their elders, would now rush into print. As of the end of 1991 this had not happened. Critics and editors complained, in fact, that the flowering which some had anticipated was not coming about for the reason that the talent was simply not there. There were also counter-complaints, however, by self-appointed spokesmen for the younger generation, who argued that the talent was there but that, with publication facilities in short supply, editors had elected to give priority to established authors.

Still other factors may account for the apparent relative dearth of fresh talents. If under the Soviet regime the experimentation and aesthetic daring which can be expected of young writers was discouraged for ideological reasons, a similarly powerful discouragement might now have been exerted by the market. Editors and publishers, pressed to keep their enterprises afloat in the presence of heavy competition, might well have shied away from printing inventively difficult or esoteric new writing because they feared it would not sell.