In this course students develop their reading, speaking, listening, and writing skills in Russian by studying the impact of the 1917 revolution and its aftermath on Russian literature. After examining early literary responses to the October communist takeover, we will trace literary developments through the establishment of the doctrine of Socialist Realism in the early 1930s to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. We will closely read and analyze brief texts by writers of all major ideological and aesthetic persuasions (including Vladimir Mayakovsky, Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Bulgakov, Marina Tsvetaeva, Daniil Kharms, Osip Mandelstam, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Vasily Aksyonov), and experience first-hand the role of literature in articulating vital responses to the challenges of the age. Honors credit available.