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Introduction : war and the hero in the Russian twentieth century – Part I. Creating heroes from chaos – Born in the crucible of war : Chapaev and his socialist realist comrades – Part II. World War II and the hero – The peasant-soldier : Alexander Tvardovsky and a new Chapaev – Eyewitnesses to heroism : Emmanuil Kazakevich and Vera Panova – Retreat : Viktor Nekrasov and the truth of the trenches – Part III. Cold War repercussions – From World War to Cold War : Tvardovsky, Solzhenitsyn, Voinovich, and heroism in the post-Stalin period – Antiheroes in a post-heroic age : Sergei Dovlatov, Vladimir Makanin, and Cold War malaise – Part IV. Chapaev and war : Russian redux – Revisiting war : Viktor Astafiev and the Boys of ’24 – Revisiting Chapaev : Viktor Pelevin and Vasily Aksyonov – Afterword. "Across the twentieth century war was the central experience of the Russian people, spurring tales of the struggles and advances of the combat hero to become a prevailing Russian literary trope. In this wide spanning text Brintlinger traces the war experiences, memories, tropes, and metaphors in literature of the Soviet and post-Soviet period, examining the work of Dmitry Furmanov, Fyodor Gladkov, Alexander Tvardovsky, Emmanuil Kazakevich, Vera Panova, Viktor Nekrasov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vladimir Voinovich, Sergei Dovlatov, Vladimir Makanin, Viktor Astafiev, Viktor Pelevin, and Vasily Aksyonov. These authors represented official Soviet literature and underground or dissident literature. They fell into and out of favor, were exiled and returned to Russia, and died at home and abroad. Most importantly, each of these writers was touched by war and reacted to the state of war in their literary works."
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