p In the course of its seven hundred years of development Russian literature has consistently and faithfully reflected the fundamental changes which have taken place in our society. For a prolonged period literary thought was inextricably bound up with a religious and historical form of consciousness, but with the development and growth of national and class consciousness it gradually began to free itself from bondage to the church.

p Beginning with monumental historicism, Russian literature worked out specific, clearcut ideals of spiritual beauty, the beauty of men who devoted themselves wholeheartedly to the common good, the good of the Russian land and the Russian state. Here we find the ideals of Christian zealot, staunch in spirit; here are valiant, courageous rulers, “goodly sufferers for the Russian land”. To a certain degree these literary personalities filled out the popular ideal of man which took shape in epic oral poetry. D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak expressed very well the interplay of these two ideals. In a letter to Ya. L. Barskov dated April 20, 1986, he wrote, “It seems to me that the Tiogatyrs’ serve as a fine complement to the ’saints’. Both of them represent 354 their native land, behind them lies the same Old Russia which they guarded. The dominant feature of the bogatyrs is their physical strength: with their broad chests they defend their homeland. Therein lies the goodness of the ’bogatyr outpost’ positioned on the battle line against the historical wandering despolers.... The ’saints’ display another side of Russian history that is still more important; they represent the moral bulwark and holy of holies of the populous future nation. These chosen few foresaw the history of a great nation....”  [354•1 

p The primary concern of literature was the historical life of Russia and the state building. That is why epic historical subjects and genres are assigned a leading role.

p Profound historicism accounts for the ties between Old Russian literature and the heroic folk epic; it also determined the manner in which man was depicted.

p Old Russian writers gradually mastered the art of fashioning profound and many-sided characters, the ability to adequately explain the causes of human behaviour. They outgrew the static, immobile depiction of man and began to explore the inner dynamics of emotions, depicting various psychological states and bringing out individual traits of the personality. This tendency took on clear contours in the seventeenth century, when the human personality and literature began to free themselves from limitless power of the church; the gradual secularisation of culture brought about the secularisation of literature. This led not only to the creation of fictional heroes, abstracted but also to a certain degree socially individualised characters; it also led to the appearance of new literary forms—the lyric and drama—and new genres such as satirical and adventure tales and tales of everyday life.

p The growing role of folklore in the development of literature facilitated its democratisation and brought it into closer contact with life. This tendency was also reflected in the language of literary works: a new, live colloquial form of speech flooded the literature of the second half of the seventeenth century, replacing the 355 already archaic literary language.

p A characteristic trait of Old Russian literature is its indissoluble ties with reality. These ties lent Old Russian literature exceptional social keenness, and an emotional lyrical spirit, making it an important instrument of political education and a factor of great significance in the succeeding centuries of development of the Russian nation and Russian culture.

p It is no accident that eighteenth century writers such as Sumarokov, Knyazhnin and Radishchev borrowed material from Old Russian literature; in the nineteenth century Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Tolstoi, and Leskov also turned to Old Russian literature.

There is no clear line of demarcation between seventeenth and early eighteenth century Russian literature, which continued to develop the genres of the adventure tale, the secular tale of everyday life, secular syllabic lyrical poetry and school drama. The literature of the eighteenth century represents an unbroken continuation of the general process of literary development. The independent and original literature of the nineteenth century was capable of developing and perfecting itself only because it was undergirded by the greatest literary achievements of Old Russian literature.