Publishing the Russian Soul? Women’s Provincial Literary Anthologies, 1990-1995

Abstract

From 1990 to 1995 four collections of women’s writing appeared in northwestern Russia: Mariia (two volumes: one issued in 1990 and the other in 1995), Zhena, kotoraia umela letat’ (The Wife Who Could Fly, 1993), and Russkaia dusha (Russian Soul, 1995). These volumes, all but ignored by Russian and Western critics, were published at the same time as a series of similar anthologies in Moscow. In the West this lack of attention is somewhat understandable – the prose, poetry, and essays from the provincial anthologies have not been translated.