How Russia Learned to Write

Irina Reyfman is a professor of Russian literature at Columbia University. She is the author and editor of several books, including Ritualized Violence Russian Style: The Duel in Russian Culture and Rank and Style: Russians in State Service, Life, and Literature.

• AcknowledgmentsNote on Transliteration and TranslationIntroduction: Russian Writers and State Service, 1750s-1850s1 To Serve or to Write? Noble Writers in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries2 Pushkin as Bureaucrat, Courtier, and Writer3 Hierarchy of Ranks according to Gogol4 Poets in the Military: Denis Davydov, Aleksandr Polezhaev, and Mikhail Lermontov5 Service Ranks in Dostoevsky's Life and FictionConclusion: Beyond RankAppendix: The Table of RanksNotesIndex

Compelling, clever, and persuasive. Examining many Russian writers' self-fashioning as members of the nobility and their careers in public service, Reyfman admirably shows that the understanding of rank should inflect all our arguments and histories of the writing profession in Russia." - Luba Golburt, University of California, Berkeley"Indispensable reading for all who study Russian literature of the Imperial period. Reyfman adds nuance and necessary reevaluation to our understanding of how literary careers and literary biography evolved in Russia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries." - Andrew Kahn, University of Oxford"Reyfman's prose is clear and readable throughout, and How Russia Learned to Write adds an intriguing new reading on canonical texts of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is one of those rare books you never knew you needed, but answers questions you have always had." - Slavic Review "Can be read profitably by a range of readers, from undergraduates to specialists. . . . Reyfman's informed analysis forces us to rethink received ideas." - Slavic and East European Journal