Bitov’s Pushkin House: Deconstructing the Late Soviet Subject

ANDREI BITOV began his writing career in official Soviet letters as a celebrated author of Young Prose like fellow author Vasilii Aksenov. Bitov took his own dissident turn early when he began his uncensored novel,Pushkin House(Pushkinskii dom), a work he described as his literary rebellion.¹ Bitov treated the same major taboo themes as Aksenov: the Stalinist camps, excessive drinking in Soviet society, the sex people were engaging in promiscuously but not discussing in print, and the problem of antisemitism after Stalin. Bitov, like Aksenov, directed his critique at his generation and people around him in Soviet society at