Abstract:

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet process have shown that the voluminous history of Russian literature compiled by scholars in the Soviet, much like the State itself, was a failure. On the contrary, works of the same type compiled by Slavic scholars in the Cold War era still have academic vitality, and The Cambridge History of Russian Literature (1989) edited by Professor Charles A. Moser at George Washington University is particularly influential. The literary history is pioneering in establishing a literary historical view that understands Russian literature within the context of imperial processes, constructing a framework that acknowledges Russian literature’s development under European cultural influence, and employing methods that recognize Russian literature through the lens of Russian cultural transformation. This kind of literary history, which surpasses the politically correct discourse of the West in the Cold War era, is beyond the scope of scholars in the Soviet limited to the official ideology guiding the compilation of literary history.

Key words: The Cambridge History of Russian Literature, the literary historical view within the contextof imperial processes, the framework of literary history under the European cultural influence