In this text, Rufus Mathewson, Jr. discusses Russian literature and demonstrates how the battles over the positive hero reappeared with dramatic clarity in the dissident literary movement that developed following Stalin's death. Mathewson argues that the true continuity in Russian prose, joining the 19th and 20th centuries, was to be found in this persistent conflict between contrary views of the real nature and proper uses of literature. This new edition, first published in 1958 and covering literary developments through 1946, includes chapters on Belinsky, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn and Sinyavsky.