Scholars
The Russian language was and is the greatest barrier to scholarship for those who have not acquired it natively. Few American scholars, most of whom acquired their language expertise in American universities or in military schools, by living and working in Russia and communciating with Russian spouses, ever feel completely at home in the Russian language and literature. Native speakers are always at a linguistic-cultural advantage in the study of their own literature. For many decades of the twentieth century, American scholars, however, provided an invaluble service in keeping alive the memory of Russian writers surpressed in their native land. The ranks of Slavic scholars have been joined by native speakers of Russian, but for many of them the barrier of a PhD degree from an American instituion could pose difficulties for a Vladimir Nabokov, not to speak of lesser figures. Thus there was always a tension between the native speakers/emigrees and the academic establishment inhabited by earlier generations of emigrees or by non-native speakers of Russian. Then there was the need of most American Slavist or Russianists to teach basic language courses and survey courses of Russian literature often in translation, except at the some forty to fifty institutions in the 1970s that offered advanced degress in Slavic literatures. At one time Russian was taught at over 400 American colleges and universities, so that the majority of professors, were not in graduate schools where narrowly focused courses could treat emigre literature at all. Faced with the choice of teaching Dostoevsky or Dovlatov, Dostoevsky invariably won.
Among scholars we must include librarians, archivists and bibliographers, to whom a great debt is owed. On these pages, they are found with their respective libraries/archives.
(Once again I turn to an artificial, but helpful distinction: those not of Russian descent, and those with native language capabilitles. I might err in my placement and would welcome corrections).
American scholars not of Russian Descent
American scholars have also devoted considerable attention to Brodsky and Solzhenitsyn. Sasha Sokolov, Yuz Aleshkovsky and Eduard Limonov, among others, have also inspired articles, monographs and dissertations by American Slavists.
John Glad has documented the emigration both as a contemporary and now as historian. John in his role at the Kennan Institute had close contact with many of the Soviet intellectuals in the United States. He did a series of video interviews, later published both in Russian and English translation. John also compiled Russian Abroad: writers, history, politics (1999), the single best source of information in English of The Third Wave.
Olga Matich edited a volume of papers and talks delivered by Russian writers at the Conference on The Third Wave held in USC in 1981.
Scholars of Russian descent
Unlike the encyclopedic Русская литература в изгнании of Gleb Struve, there is no single Russian source or historian of the Third Wave. Olga Matich points to the paradox that Struve's work about the emigration was published in Russian, while his general histories of Russian Literature were published in English.(168-169). Some American scholars were both actual participants of theThird Wave, and have written on Russian literature. The list below is far from complete.
MIkahil Epshtein moves to US in 1990. See his article on Amerossija.
Vadim Kreid
