LFU:online

The students have intensively studied the relationship between literature and politics, have become familiar with central theoretical texts on this question, and have read important political texts from three centuries of Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian literature, from the great novels of the 19th century and socrealist texts to the current protest literature against Belarusian dictator Lukashenka and the constant Russian aggressions against Ukraine since 2014.

"Chto delat'?" - "What is to be done?" - Nikolai Chernyshevskii asks right in the title of his novel published in 1863, a question that also plagues Lev Tolstoy - his text Tak chto zhe nam delat'? [So What Shall We Do?] appears in 1886 - as well as Vladimir Lenin, who entitles one of his main texts Chto delat'? in 1902. Fedor Dostoevsky, in turn, publishes an angry replica of Chernyshevskii in 1864 under the title Zapiski iz podpol'ja [ Notes from Underground]. Almost too naturally, Russian literature politicizes in the 19th century, a situation that does not change in the 20th century: At the latest from the 1930s, Russian literary life is determined by the opposition of the official, thoroughly political literature of Sotsrealism (Gor'kii, Polevoi, Sholochov) and the underground literature critical of the system (Solzhenitsyn, Siniavskii, Platonov).

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, suddenly anything can be printed in Russia, but criticism of the system can still result in (legal) persecution, as the example of the Belarusian Nobel Prize winner for literature Sviatlana Aleksievich with her reportage novels on the war in Afghanistan or Chernobyl' proves. Last but not least, the major protest movements of the 21st century are accompanied by literature, in Ukraine for example by Andrei Kurkov, in Belarus by Julia Tsimafeeva and Alhierd Bacharevich. Besides that, the situation in Eastern Ukraine, the Russian aggressions since 2014 and the Russian invasion from february 2022 are depicted in texts by Ukrainian authors Serhii Zhadan, Iurii Andruchovych and Andrei Kurkov.

The reading of selected political texts in Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian literature is intended not only to trace the relationship between literature and politics in Eastern Europe, but also to take a look at what happens to literary texts that are read 'politically' and, not least, to clarify the question of whether apolitical literature is possible at all. All texts are available both in the original and in translation.

Analysis and reflection of the primary texts as well as critical reflection of the secondary literature by all participants, lectures, short presentations by the students, group discussions, moderated workshops

Oral presentation, term paper

A bibliography is supplied at the start of the semester

None

This course can only be credited as elective module 4 if there is a clear thematic difference to elective module 3.