SOURCE: “Pil'njak's ‘The Third Capital’: Russia and the West in Fact and Fiction,” in Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring, 1978, pp. 39–51.

In the following essay, Avins contends that “The Third Capital” is important “for its extended treatment of the contrast between Europe and Russia present in a number of his other works.”

The Russian preoccupation with Europe is reflected in the works of many Russian writers and expressed in many forms. It appears in eighteenth-century adventure tales, travel writings, and satire, and in contemporary poetry and prose. Often the writer's look westward is simultaneously an act of introspection—a probing of Russia's identity. This is true of Odoevskij's Russian Nights (1844), which mingles philosophical dialogues with the fantastic; it characterizes, too, fiction like Dostoevskij's “The Gambler” (1866) and Leskov's “The Left-Handed Craftsman” (1881). Dostoevskij, whose novels also involve Russia's interrelationship with the West, addresses it more directly in Winter...