Russian LiteratureFor most English speaking readers, Russian literature consists of a small number of individual writers nineteenth century masters such as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Turgenev or a few well known works Chekhov's plays, Brodsky's poems, and perhaps Master and Margarita and Doctor Zhivago from the twentieth century. The medieval period, as well as the brilliant tradition of Russian lyric poetry from the eighteenth century to the present, are almost