Russian Literature, 1988-1994

The collapse of the Soviet Union brought about radical changes in the Russianliterary world. With the state's relinquishment of control over literary production,writers acquired freedom of expression and publication. State publishinghouses, now self-supporting enterprises, stopped printing money-losing booksand turned to foreign detective novels and erotic literature, effecting a considerableshift in popular taste. The writer, no longer a producer of ideology, has beenrecast as a struggling comp