SOURCE: Landsman, Neil B. “Decembrist Romanticism: A. A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky.¹” In Problems of Russian Romanticism, edited by Robert Reid, pp. 64-95. Aldershot, Hants, England: Gower, 1986.

In the following essay, Landsman discusses Bestuzhev's role as the foremost practitioner of Russian Romanticism in the 1830s.

It is refreshing to see the wealth of attention being lavished recently on romanticism by distinguished Soviet scholars. Particularly heartening is the attempt to extend the bounds of romanticism and allot it its rightful place in the development of Russian literature. N. L. Stepanov, for example, in 1968 rejects the previous commonly-held view of romanticism as something inferior and hostile to realism² and in 1973 criticises the general failure to appreciate romanticism by those who consider realism the sole progressive literary force.³ Marlinsky for the large part remains unaffected by all this reassessment; from the 1820s to the present day he has retained his unshaken position as the...