The Russian Literary Field in the 21st Century: Assessing its State Through Interviewing the Critics

The study examines the transformation and disintegration of institutional structures within the Russian literary process during the 21^st century, analyzing how post-Soviet commercialization and digitalization have reshaped the field. Through interviews with 35 literary critics, the research traces evolving forms of literary existence, recognition mechanisms, and the changing status of writers. Building on Bourdieu’s field theory, the work documents a paradigm shift from hierarchical, institutionally-embedded systems to fragmented, networked and unstable configurations of the literary field. The findings reveal literature’s adaptive capacity despite the crisis of traditional institutions, demonstrating how creative work maintains symbolic value while losing former economic and institutional support. These transformations represent a social process generating new forms of cultural agency among writers, critics, publishers and digital platforms. Hybrid interaction formats emerge between: authors and readers, literary institutions and commercial structures, traditional media and social networks. Consequently, a text’s symbolic value now derives not just from traditional arbiters (writers’ unions, established journals) but equally from networked communities, platform algorithms and market mechanisms. This dual legitimization creates constant tension between autonomous artistic principles and heteronomous market/digital logics. The study ultimately maps how Russian literature negotiates its position amid competing value systems, where institutional authority coexists with decentralized, algorithmically-driven recognition processes in the digital age.

sociology of literature, literary critics, interviews, social field, writer’s reputation, commercialization, digitalization