This book explores the response of writers and of fiction to the current language situation in Russia. In a period of linguistic liberalisation, instability and change, followed by sundry attempts to regulate and legislate language usage, post-Soviet Russia may be characterised by the language question permeating all spheres of social, cultural and political life. Taking as my point of departure the debates on language change in post-perestroika Russian culture, I examine the interpretations these debates receive within the realm of literature. ‘Literature’ refers here to both ‘writers of fiction’ and ‘fictional writing’. In other words, my framework includes not only explicit reflections on language by writers of fiction in the contexts of the language debate, language legislation or linguistic codification (for example, in interviews or roundtable discussions), but also implicit responses that may be elicited from their literary works. In combining these two perspectives, I aim to shed light simultaneously on two significant issues: first, the role of writers in the broader social and political context of language culture in contemporary Russia and, second, the various ways in which the linguistic and aesthetic practices of literary art can engage with questions related to the negotiation of linguistic norms.

Both issues have a prehistory in Russian culture, since social commitment, as well as moral and philosophical authority, traditionally accompany the task of being ‘a great Russian writer’, on the one hand, while literary texts have long played a norm-maintaining role in education, on the other. Whereas the continuity of this tradition was seriously challenged by the break-up of the Soviet Union, radically changing the conditions for both writers and their literary texts, there are signs of its re-emergence in a new, refashioned form in the post-Soviet era. To be sure, literature and its creators do not set the entire agenda for linguistic development and norm negotiation in contemporary Russia; I hope to show, however, that writers and the linguistic practices of literary art offer original, creative, sometimes idiosyncratic but always engaging contributions, to the broader discussion of language culture and society.