The writers Russians don't read – and you should

Asked to name their country’s greatest writers in a new survey, Russians stick with the classics. The Levada Center’s survey of 1,600 Russians is topped, predictably enough, by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Pushkin. So far, so normal. UK polls can be similarly old-fashioned. Work your eyes down the list of names and, unsurprisingly, they are almost exclusively male. And there is not a single living author in the top 10 choices.

Is this the best of Russian literature? Are living or female Russian writers not worth reading? Clearly not; there are legions of highly original, thought-provoking, contemporary female authors, like Lyudmila Ulitskaya (sneaking in as the penultimate name on the list) and Marina Stepnova. Lisa Hayden, author of popular blog Lizok’s Bookshelf and a specialist in post-Soviet Russian fiction, has observed that the survey’s wording did not favour anyone “new”, since it asks people to name “outstanding” or “prominent” writers. Of course, with that criteria, people tend to think of Tolstoy and Chekhov first, and not necessarily Mikhail Shishkin, Vladimir Sorokin or Oleg Pavlov.

But there are so many contemporary Russian writers to enjoy: Boris Akunin, best known for popular thrillers, is one of the contemporary authors who actually made it into the survey. His series of clever, tsarist-era detective stories feature the brilliantly understated diplomat-turned-sleuth, Erast Fandorin. The first book, Azazel, set in imperial Moscow, London and Petersburg, was published in English as The Winter Queen in 2003.

Another gem among the few living authors mentioned, Victor Pelevin is a master of speculative fiction. His neologism-packed 2011 novel, S.N.U.F.F. came out recently in English, translated by Andrew Bromfield; a savage satire set in a media-mad dystopia, S.N.U.F.F. explores sex, death and what it means to be human. And the outspoken author Lyudmila Ulitskaya, whose evocative 2010 novel The Big Green Tent was translated last year by Polly Gannon. Set in Moscow after Stalin’s death, The Big Green Tent is a generous, inclusive book, spanning more than four decades of Soviet life. It has an openly Tolstoyan ambition, capturing the mangled spirit of an tumultuous age through the interlocking stories of three friends.

The appearance of bestselling detective novelist, Darya Dontsova, at No 15 surprised some people who felt that penning pulp fiction whodunnits doesn’t make her a “prominent” author. This result is likely to be a reflection of what most people actually read – an author they can name. The idea that there might be right and wrong answers to the question might explain why 12% of respondents apparently could not (or would not) name a single famous author.

The survey’s findings suggest a tendency to play safe and rely on officially authorised options. For example, it is not surprising to find Pushkin scoring highly. A 19th-century critic once said “Pushkin is our everything”, a phrase still popular in Russian schools (“We repeat it as if hypnotised,” says Ksenia Papazova of Glagoslav books, which publishes Russian works in translation). The influence of the Russian education system is clear throughout this list, awash with authorised Soviet classics.

Anna Gunin, who recently co-translated Chernobyl Prayer by Nobel prizewinner Svetlana Alexievich, points out that the presence of state-approved author Maxim Gorky way ahead of dissident writers like Platonov, Bunin and Dovlatov suggests “the lingering Soviet influence on the public’s mindset”. Of the top 10 authors, only Bulgakov was underground in the Soviet era; as Gunin says: “We could read into this that the Russian public is tending towards politically uncontroversial art these days.”

Another striking omission from the list is Mikhail Shishkin, the only writer to have won all three of Russia’s major literary awards. After snagging the National Bestseller with complex, allusive Maidenhair and the Big Book prize with his moving epistolary novel, The Light and the Dark, Shishkin announced in 2013 that he would not take part in an official delegation because he did not want to represent “a country where power has been seized by a corrupt, criminal regime”. Since then, some outlets that used to praise his work have sidelined him, inevitably affecting his potential to become a household name.

Contemporary writers in Russia are often bleak and challenging. Postmodern literary patchworks, dense thickets of imagery, or violent, veiled satires, while pleasing some literary judges, are unlikely to win huge global audiences. But there are other factors at play in Russia. This poll suggests a conservatism beyond the casual reader’s nostalgia that inflects every literary poll. In the Putin era, readers who embrace new and challenging narratives have to be brave, as well as curious.