From Symbolism to Socialist Realism offers a broad variety of materials contextualising the literary texts most frequently read in Russian literature courses at the undergraduate and beginning graduate level. This collection of critical- theoretical articles, cultural and historical analyses, literary manifestos and declarations of literary aesthetics, memoirs of revolutionary terrorism and arrests by the NKVD, political denunciations and “literary vignettes” captures the spirit of this period in a nutshell. The voices of this “polyphonic” READER are diverse: Briusov, Savinkov, Ivanov-Razumnik, Kollontai, Tsvetaeva, Shklovsky, Olesha, Zoshchenko, Zhdanov, Grossman, Evtushenko and others. The range of specialists on Russian culture represented here is equally broad: Clark, Erlich, Falen, Grossman, Nilsson, Peace, Poznansky, Siniavskii, Volkov and others. Together they evoke and illuminate a complex and tragic era.