Female School Story in Modernist Russian Literature : The Continuity of Tradition Despite the Prohibition

The article focuses on the genre of girls’ school stories, which was developing in Russian literature in 1900–1930, before and after the dramatic shift of the state ideology. The main subjects of the study are Lidija Charskaja’s works The Notes of an Institute Girl and Ljuda Vlassovskaja (1901–1904) and a play by Aleksandra Brushtejn Blue and Pink (1936). The research demonstrates that the Russian girls’ school story of that period, influenced by this genre’s classical works, elaborated its specific language, plot elements, and system of characters. All those essential features were based on real-life experiences of boarding schools for girls of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The Soviet era critics attempted to eliminate Charskaja’s books from circulation among the new post-revolutionary readership. However, as this article attempts to demonstrate, even while the ideology of the school story has changed dramatically, the structure remained in tack for many years to come. The tradition of the genre was continued despite and, perhaps, due to the ideological pressures of Soviet censorship.