Russian Literature by Gypsy

Which Russian short story writer, considered by many to be the greatest of all time, said, "Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress?"

Which writer's first novel, "Poor People" was written to raise funds to cover his gambling addiction? He's better known for novels he wrote following his Siberian exile from 1849-1854, including "Notes from Underground," which is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature.

During the Khrushchev Thaw from the early 1950s to the early 1960s, Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote which poem, in which he denounced the Soviet distortion of fact surrounding the German massacre of Jews in Kiev in September 1941? The name of the poem comes from the site of the massacre.

Which Russian novel got its name from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's "La Guerre et la Paix?"

The rhyme scheme AbAbCCddEffEgg is called the "Onegin stanza” based on the “Eugene Onegin,” a novel in verse that has 389 stanzas of iambic tetrameter. What is the other two-word term for this rhyme scheme, the first of which is the last name of the author?

Alexei Maximovich Peshkov wrote under the pseudonym Jehudiel Khlamida before choosing this one in 1892, which comes from the Russian word for "bitter." He was a five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Which Russian writer wrote and published "Hans Küchelgarten" under the name V. Alov? When it was derided by critics, he bought all the copies, destroyed them and swore off poetry forever. Seen more as a Ukrainian writer than a Russian one in the beginning of his career, he saw immediate success with his short story collections "Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka" and "Mirgorod." Fyokor Dostoyevsky played the postmaster Shpekin in a 1860 performance of this writer's "The Government Inspector."

Which Russian writer, from peasant stock, had an illiterate mother who only learned how to read later in life in order to correspond with him? It took him 28 years to write "Virgin Soil Upturned," for which he won the Lenin Prize. It took him 14 years to write "And Quiet Flows the Don," for which he won the Stalin Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

What is the name of the play that Alexander Pushkin wrote in 1825 and published five years later? It was first staged in its original and uncensored version in 2007, 133 years after the premier of Modest Mussorgsky's opera based on it.

Pushkin was killed in a duel with his brother-in-law in 1837. Which Russian writer and pacifist once challenged Ivan Turgenev to a duel in 1861? (Unrelatedly, in 1908 he was the subject of the first color photograph taken in Russia.)

Which writer played a large role in bringing Don Quixote to Russia? His relationship with Pauline Viardot helped his Spanish fluency to the extent that he'd considered translating Cervantes's novel into Russian, and his 1860 speech "Hamlet and Don Quixote" may have inspired the creation of Prince Myshkin's character in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot." He is also credited with popularizing the concept of the "superfluous man," based upon his 1850 novella.

Best known for "The Village," "Dry Valley," "The Life of Arseniev," and "Dark Avenues," who was the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1933?

Which Russian writer of "A Common Story," "Oblomov," and "The Precipice" also served as a censor? In his memoir, "An Uncommon Story," he accused Ivan Turgenev of plagiarizing his work.

Which Russian writer won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958, but was forced to decline the prize because one of his novels was smuggled to Milan to be published and distributed with the help of the CIA?

What was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's only novel that was published in Russia and the first openly distributed book in Soviet literary history to have an account of Stalinist repression?