Andrei Bitov's Pushkin House : A Critical Analysis of the Late Soviet Hero

This article analyzes Bitov's Pushkin House in light of discussions of the French nouveau roman and Alain Robbe‐Grillet's theory of the new novel. The goal is to define Bitov's technique as neo‐avant‐garde, rather than postmodernist or neo‐modernist, in order to show how Bitov used avant‐garde techniques in combination with elements of the novelistic tradition to express–and create–new relations between the Soviet person and the world. This approach sheds light on Bitov's innovative use of collage to produce a rough verbal and narrative surface in the novel. It emphasizes also the contradictory psychology of protagonist Lyova as constructed by Bitov in the novel on the basis of classic psychological prose updated for the late Soviet period.