| Abstract [eng] |
This dissertation makes use of Pierre Bourdieu’s and Pascale Casanova’s theoretical work to analyse the hitherto unexplored Soviet and post-Soviet Russian literature in Lithuania through the methodological lens of the sociology of literature. The research focuses on the poetry that dominated the literary scene within the specified time frame. The Russian literature of Lithuania is examined as a partly independent segment of the literary field, whose characteristics unfold through its relationships with the national fields of Lithuanian and Russian literature as well as the global space of literature. The structure and development of this segment and its relations to the national literary fields are analysed by way of exploring the individual and collective strategies of the agents of this segment. The publications which represent the different poles in the literary field tend to emphasise the minority or diasporic identity associated with this segment: during the Soviet times – Literary Lithuania, a journal-almanach censored by the Soviet ideology and the Samisdat almanach For One’s Own; after the fall of the Soviet Union – Vinius, a journal published by the Lithuanian Writers’ Union and the online project The Indoeuropean Dictation. The individual strategies of the poets of different generations, which are interpreted as respectively stories of failure (Jurij Dubasov, Jurij Grigorjev, Mikhail Didusenko) and success (Jurij Kobrin, Georgij Jefremov, Lena Eltang) reveal not only the positions they occupy within the field, but also the peculiarities of the space of possibilities within the segment. The Soviet space of possibilities was restricted to the poet’s role as a unilateral intermediary between different literary fields. At the time of the National Revival and especially after the Restoration of Independence the repertory of positions did expand, however, the historically defined structure of the segment has not been favourable to professional collective initiatives, which explains why Lithuania’s Russian literature, unlike that of Latvia or Estonia, has not been able to gain more significance in the national literary fields. |
