what is russia
Russia has a longstanding problem coming to terms with her own identity. How can we explain the nation that lies on the threshold of Europe and Asia, the civilization that witnessed some of the most oppressive regimes in the Western world, and produced a disproportionate amount of extraordinary literature, art and music in the past two hundred years? This course will explore Russian identity through the lens of its literature and art. We will compare Russia’s deep-seated identity quest with our own similar situation as Canadians whose culture and literature require constant legitimation and re-definition. We will examine how Russia sees itself in relation to its tormented past, and how it revisits key themes and issues of its past. We will use short, seminal texts by the following writers to shed light on our understanding of what it means to be Russian: Fedor Dostoevsky, Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Joseph Brodsky, as well as some contemporary documentary fi
