Superfluous Men

If there could be said to be a central river - a Volga, as it were - feeding Russian literature since its inception, it is this: heroes conform, accepting fate and the will of the community; antiheroes are individualists who do not fit into society, who battle against fate and often try to impose foreign ideals onto the community. Superfluous men are these latter sorts of outsiders, and they have been with Russian literature from the beginning of its modern existence. This issue of Chtenia (#28) looks at the rise of Superfluous Man in Russian literature.