Chapter 12 - Russia

Summary

While the canon of twentieth-century Russian poetry has expanded considerably in recent decades, little attention was paid to most of the poetry written about World War One for almost a hundred years. The conflict occupied a marginal position in Soviet-era cultural memory; many of the poets who wrote about it were similarly sidelined, although the war was commemorated by émigrés. The poetic response to the war was aesthetically diverse and expressed attitudes ranging from an enthusiastic embrace of patriotic duty to pacifism. There were few ‘soldier poets’: Nikolai Gumilev was among the very few established or aspiring poets who actively pursued front-line military service. As the centenary of the war’s outbreak approached, and interest grew in Russia’s imperial history and émigré culture, scholars and editors have begun to introduce readers to this unfamiliar poetic legacy. The process of forming a canon of World War One poetry is only just beginning.