Russian Pulp: The Detektiv and the Russian Way of Crime: The "Detektiv" and the Way of Russian Crime Annotated Edition

The ubiquity of the detektiv may puzzle Westerners, who may conclude that this is a post-Soviet import like McDonalds. Not so—Russia sprouted its own versions of penny dreadfuls as soon as peasants came off the land and learned to read. The guardians of Russias high culture, however, were enraged by this pulpy popular genre and so contrived under the Soviets to supress it, making everyone read improving and uplifting literature instead. Russias junk readers hung on, though, snatching up the few detektivs that made their way through censorship, until, in the Gorbachev era, the genre blossomed as the perfect vehicle for social criticism—the detektiv talked about social problems in a way that was exciting enough that people wanted to read it. When the Soviet Union finally collapsed, one of the few things left standing in the rubble was the detektiv—which now is sold on every street corner and read on every bus.

The first full-length study of the genre, Russian Pulp demonstrates that the detektiv is no knock-off. Summarizing and quoting extensively from scores of novels, this study shows that Russians understand law-breaking and crime, policemen, and criminals in ways wholly different from those of the West. After explaining why solving a crime is always a social function in Russia, Russian Pulp examines the staples of crime fiction—sex, theft, and murder—to demonstrate that Russians see police officer and criminal, thief and victim, as part of a single continuum. To the Russians,