Russian Realism

Russian realism is a nineteenth-century literary tradition in which the detail of ordinary life carries social, psychological, and spiritual questions. Tolstoy follows the interaction of family, history, and conscience; Dostoevsky tests convictions through troubled encounters and competing voices; Turgenev examines changing relations between generations. Long novels and shorter narratives give different forms to these concerns. Characters often discover that an abstract belief offers little guidance when another person's suffering demands a response. The tradition's moral complexity grows from that encounter between inward judgment and the obligations of life with others.