Writing a Usable Past: Russian Literary Culture, 1917-1937

In
Writing a Usable Past , Brintlinger considers the interactions of post-Revolutionary Russian and emigre culture with the genre of biography. She argues that in the years after the Revolution, Russian writers looked to the great literary figures of the past to help them construct a post-Revolutionary present. Brintlinger looks at the biographical writing of Yuri Tynianov, Vladislav Khodasevich, and Mikhail Bulgakov, comparing their successful biography/ies to their failed attempts at biographies of Alexander Pushkin on the centennial anniversary of his death. Brintlinger argues that popular commemorations - exhibits, concerts, special issues of journals - were a more fitting biography than the genre of the ‘usable past.