Russian philology
literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Rus', the Russian
Empire or the Soviet Union. The roots of Russian literature can be traced to the Middle Ages,
when epics and chronicles in Old Russian were composed. By the Age of Enlightenment,
literature had grown in importance, and from the early 1830s, Russian literature underwent an
astounding golden age in poetry, prose and drama. Romanticism permitted a flowering of
poetic talent: Vasily Zhukovsky and later his protégé Alexander Pushkin came to the fore.
Prose was flourishing as well. The first great Russian novelist was Nikolai Gogol. Then came
Ivan Turgenev, who mastered both short stories and novels. Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor
Dostoyevsky soon became internationally renowned. In the second half of the century Anton
Chekhov excelled in short stories and became a leading dramatist. The beginning of the 20th
century ranks as the Silver Age of Russian poetry
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