Vladislav Davidzon
Moscow-born and New York City-based conceptual artist and writer Yevgeniy Fiks has explored the various submerged narratives and counter-histories of the Soviet experience of Communism for more then a decade. A prolific artist and performer, his technique is a microhistorical unspooling of often-quirky archival finds that lead to an illuminating shift of perspective about aspects of the Communist past. His books include the Communist Guide to New York City (2008) as well as the hilarious and instructive Lenin for Your Library? (2007), a collection of acceptance and rejection letters sent to him after he attempted to donate one-hundred copies It’s not the first time that Russian literature has, like Russia itself, emerged from isolation to find itself lagging behind Western developments. Decades after the surrealism and excesses of capitalism were taken up in Western literature, free market fiction arrived in Russia in the ’90s, ushered in largely by Vladimir Sorokin—dark horseman of the ’80s underground, inserter of casual cannibalism into wholesome literary formulas, and purveyor of other shocks to the nervous system of Homo Sovieticus. In Sorokin, Russia found its Pynchon. This year, the US has found Sorokin. In addition to headlining the 2011 PEN festival, two US publishers—New