Diaboliad
Diaboliad ( Russian: Дьяволиада) is a short story by Mikhail Bulgakov. It was the only story of his to be published as a book in his lifetime. History In 1923 Mikhail Bulgakov met Nikolai Semenovich Angarskiy, who was the senior editor and manager of the almanac ''Nedra''. After making acquaintance, Angarskiy subsequently began publishing Bulgakov's stories in the journal, such as The Fatal Eggs and others. Bulgakov read the story to Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy, who liked it very much, however Bulgakov himself noted in his diary twice that he himself was not pleased with the story. ''Diaboliad'' was first published in 1924. In 1925, the story was published separately as Bulgakov's own book. Two months after publication, the Joint State Political Directorate of the USSR confiscated the edition, although Angarskiy secured approval from the Glavlit to publish a second edition of the book. In 1926, it was successfully published again, however Bulgakov then cut ties wit ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mikhail Bulgakov
Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov ( rus, links=no, Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков, p=mʲɪxɐˈil ɐfɐˈnasʲjɪvʲɪtɕ bʊlˈɡakəf; – 10 March 1940) was a Soviet writer, medical doctor, and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his novel ''The Master and Margarita'', published posthumously, which has been called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century. He is also known for his novel ''The White Guard''; his plays '' Ivan Vasilievich'', ''Flight'' (also called ''The Run''), and ''The Days of the Turbins''; and other works of the 1920s and 1930s. He wrote mostly about the horrors of the Russian Civil War and about the fate of Russian intellectuals and officers of the Tsarist Army caught up in revolution and Civil War.Bulgakov's biogra ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Fatal Eggs
''The Fatal Eggs'' (russian: Роковые яйца, ) is a novella by Mikhail Bulgakov, a Soviet novelist and playwright whose most famous work is ''The Master and Margarita''. It was written in 1924 and first published in 1925. The novel became quite popular, but was much criticised by most Soviet critics as a mockery of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the leadership of Soviet Russia. Background By 1924, Bulgakov was relatively well known as a writer. He had published several short stories, including '' Dyavoliada'', in some ways a precursor to ''Master and Margarita'', and started publishing his first novel, ''The White Guard''. ''The Fatal Eggs'' was finished in early October 1924 and published in the ''Nedra'' journal in February 1925, then included in the short-story collection ''Diaboliad'' later that year. A shortened edition was also published in May–June 1925 in the ''Krasnaya Panorama'' journal, under the title ''The Ray of Life'' (Russian: ''Луч жизни''). ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving Magic (supernatural), magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy literature and drama. From the twentieth century, it has expanded further into various media, including film, television, graphic novels, manga, animations and video games. Fantasy is distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror fiction, horror by the respective absence of scientific or macabre themes, although these genres overlap. In popular culture, the fantasy genre predominantly features settings that emulate Earth, but with a sense of otherness. In its broadest sense, however, fantasy consists of works by many writers, artists, filmmakers, and musicians from ancient mythology, myths and legends to many recent and popular works. Traits Most fantasy uses magic (paranormal), magic or other supernatural elements as a ma ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Joint State Political Directorate
The Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU; russian: Объединённое государственное политическое управление) was the Intelligence agency, intelligence and state security service and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1923 to 1934. The OGPU was formed from the State Political Directorate of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic one year after the Treaty on the Creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, founding of the Soviet Union and responsible to the Council of People's Commissars. The agency operated inside and outside the Soviet Union, persecuting political criminals and opponents of the Bolsheviks such as White émigré, White émigrés, Soviet dissidents, and anti-communists. The OGPU was based in the Lubyanka Building in Moscow and headed by Felix Dzerzhinsky until his death in 1926 and then Vyacheslav Menzhinsky until it was reincorporated as the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) of the NKV ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (, ; rus, Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский, Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, p=ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ dəstɐˈjefskʲɪj, a=ru-Dostoevsky.ogg, links=yes; 11 November 18219 February 1881), sometimes transliterated as Dostoyevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. Dostoevsky's literary works explore the human condition in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes. His most acclaimed novels include ''Crime and Punishment'' (1866), ''The Idiot'' (1869), ''Demons'' (1872), and ''The Brothers Karamazov'' (1880). His 1864 novella, ''Notes from Underground'', is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature. Numerous literary critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature, as many of his works are considered highly influen ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol; uk, link=no, Мико́ла Васи́льович Го́голь, translit=Mykola Vasyliovych Hohol; (russian: Яновский; uk, Яновський, translit=Yanovskyi) ( – ) was a Russian novelist, short story writer and playwright of Ukrainian origin. Gogol was one of the first to use the technique of the grotesque, in works such as " The Nose", " Viy", "The Overcoat", and "Nevsky Prospekt". These stories, and others such as " Diary of a Madman", have also been noted for their proto-surrealist qualities. According to Viktor Shklovsky, Gogol's strange style of writing resembles the "ostranenie" technique of defamiliarization. His early works, such as ''Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka'', were influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing, Ukrainian culture and folklore. His later writing satirised political corruption in the Russian Empire (''The Government Inspector'', '' Dead Souls''). The novel ''Taras Bulba'' (1835), the play ''Marriage ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Literary Realism
Literary realism is a literary genre, part of the broader realism in arts, that attempts to represent subject-matter truthfully, avoiding speculative fiction and supernatural elements. It originated with the realist art movement that began with mid- nineteenth-century French literature (Stendhal) and Russian literature (Alexander Pushkin). Literary realism attempts to represent familiar things as they are. Realist authors chose to depict everyday and banal activities and experiences. Background Broadly defined as "the representation of reality", realism in the arts is the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, as well as implausible, exotic and supernatural elements. Realism has been prevalent in the arts at many periods, and is in large part a matter of technique and training, and the avoidance of stylization. In the visual arts, illusionistic realism is the accurate depiction of lifeforms, perspective, and the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Russian Literature
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia and its émigrés and to Russian language, Russian-language literature. The roots of Russian literature can be traced to the Middle Ages, when epics and chronicles in Old East Slavic 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. Mikhail Lermontov was one of the most important poets and novelists. The first great Russian novelist was Nikolai Gogol. Then came Ivan Turgenev, who mastered both short stories and novels. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy soon became internationally renowned. Other important figures of Russian realism were Ivan Goncharov, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin and Nikolai Leskov. In the second h ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Yevgeny Zamyatin
Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin ( rus, Евге́ний Ива́нович Замя́тин, p=jɪvˈɡʲenʲɪj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ zɐˈmʲætʲɪn; – 10 March 1937), sometimes anglicized as Eugene Zamyatin, was a Russian author of science fiction, philosophy, literary criticism, and political satire. Despite being the son of a Russian Orthodox priest, Zamyatin lost his faith in Christianity at an early age and became a Bolshevik. As a member of his Party's Pre-Revolutionary underground, Zamyatin was repeatedly arrested, beaten, imprisoned, and exiled. However, Zamyatin was just as deeply disturbed by the policies pursued by the All-Union Communist Party (b) (VKP (b) following the October Revolution as he had been by the Tsarist policy of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality. Due to his subsequent use of literature to both satirize and criticize the Soviet Union's enforced conformity and increasing totalitarianism, Zamyatin, whom Mirra Ginsburg has dubbed "a man of incorruptib ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Glavlit
Main Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press under the Council of Ministers of the USSR (russian: Главное управление по охране государственных тайн в печати при СМ СССР) was the official censorship and state secret protection organ in the Soviet Union. The censorship agency was established in 1922 under the name "Main Administration for Literary and Publishing Affairs at the RSFSR Narkompros", abbreviated as Glavlit (Главлит). The latter term was in semiofficial use until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Since the word "Glavlit" hints at "literature", the organization is often confused with Goskomizdat, which performed another type of censorship: it controlled the political content in fiction, poetry, etc. Chronology of names *1922: Main Administration for Literary and Publishing Affairs under the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR (Главное управление п ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national republics; in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian SFSR. Other major cities included Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev ( Ukrainian SSR), Minsk ( Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent (Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR), and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR). It was the largest country in the world, covering over and spanning eleven time zones. The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Gove ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy
Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy (russian: link= no, Алексей Николаевич Толстой; – 23 February 1945) was a Russian writer who wrote in many genres but specialized in science fiction and historical novels. Despite having opposed the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, he was able to return to Russia six years later and live a privileged life as a highly paid author, reputedly a millionaire, who adapted his writings to conform to the line laid down by the communist party. Life and career Parentage Tolstoy's mother Alexandra Leontievna Turgeneva (1854–1906) was a grand-niece of Decembrist Nikolay Turgenev and a relative of the renowned Russian writer Ivan Turgenev. She married Count Nikolay Alexandrovich Tolstoy (1849–1900), a member of the aristocratic Tolstoy family and a distant relative of Leo Tolstoy. Aleksey claimed that Count Tolstoy was his biological father, which allowed him to style himself as a Count, but since his mother had taken a lover and le ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |