Introduction: The Russian Gothic

Abstract

Abstract This paper is the introduction to a cluster of articles on the Gothic in Russian and Soviet culture and literature. It offers a general definition of the term “Gothic” in cultural history and a brief overview of the history of the Gothic mode in Russian and Soviet culture, as well as of treatments of the Russian and Soviet Gothic in scholarship. The authors note that the Gothic was late to take root in Russian cultural traditions, and speculate concerning the relationship between Gothic, as a mode that is concerned with the threatening resurgence in modern experience of archaic experience, with revolutionary social transformations and associated political discourses and social structures. The introduction concludes with preliminary remarks about each of the articles included in the cluster.