The romanticist perspective on literary heritage is a popular trope in various cultures, especially from the so-called “Golden” and “Silver” Ages. In the context of Russia's ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the conversation about the legacies of Russian literary culture has been reignited, and the long-standing need to critically revisit our notions of the “greats” of Russian literature – Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Lermontov, and others – has acquired new perspectives. Anna Narinskaya will reflect on how we can rethink our ways of approaching Russian literature, taking into account the “allergic” reaction to the “politicisation” of literature in the Soviet period and the lack of a critical microhistorical approach to the analysis of the discourse in which works have been written, read and interpreted throughout history. What can be the way forward? How can universities play a role in this process? What do contemporary writers and poets who wield the language have to say about it? In the context of the Pushkin House Book Prize, where Anna Narinskaya serves as a judge, this conversation is essential to outline new possibilities against the backdrop of stifled and, in many ways, almost impossible discussion. The event will be moderated by Denis Maksimov. 

Anna Narinskaya is an author, journalist, curator, and documentary filmmaker, whose works have won the Intermuseum and the Leipzig Book Fair awards. More recently she has become involved in civic activism, and she now lives in Berlin where she writes for the “Tagesspiegel” and the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” and curates exhibitions.

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