Aksyonov, Venedikt Erofeev, Limonov, and Sokolov, �children of the sixties and seventies�, were among the first to test the limits of �glasnost� in the post-Stalin period. Although their major novels suggest a shared modernist belief in the power of verbal art to provide a place or promise of truth, and, perhaps, salvation, they set out first to recapture, for their abused native tongue, its ability to �mean�. They called into question the literary conventions concerning logicality, coherence, and propriety. ...
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Aksyonov, Venedikt Erofeev, Limonov, and Sokolov, �children of the sixties and seventies�, were among the first to test the limits of �glasnost� in the post-Stalin period. Although their major novels suggest a shared modernist belief in the power of verbal art to provide a place or promise of truth, and, perhaps, salvation, they set out first to recapture, for their abused native tongue, its ability to �mean�. They called into question the literary conventions concerning logicality, coherence, and propriety. Through their own �aberrant discourse� they sought to �mean� anew. Long in need of thorough explication, their works constitute the missing link between the �alternative prose� writers of the nineties and Russia's pre-Soviet literary heritage.
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