The perspective offered here will seem unexpected to many: Soviet literature (not all of it, but its main movement, "Lenin-Stalinist") originates not from the "progressive" writers of the 19th century, as we were taught in the past, but from conservatives and "reactionaries" - Dostoevsky, Pism, Krestovsky. But in addition to purely literary matters, Prilapin and his friends are promoting an issue that for many of today's left and right seems like a provocation. That is, not only Soviet literature, but also the origins of Russian Bolshevism are much closer to Slavophiles and the Black Hundreds than to the dreams of the revolutionary and pro-European intelligentsia of the 19th century.

The perspective offered here will seem unexpected to many: Soviet literature (not all of it, but its main movement, "Lenin-Stalinist") originates not from the "progressive" writers of the 19th century, as we were taught in the past, but from conservatives and "reactionaries" - Dostoevsky, Pism, Krestovsky. But in addition to purely literary matters, Prilapin and his friends are promoting an issue that for many of today's left and right seems like a provocation. That is, not only Soviet literature, but also the origins of Russian Bolshevism are much closer to Slavophiles and the Black Hundreds than to the dreams of the revolutionary and pro-European intelligentsia of the 19th century.