To describe an artistic genre is not just to propose an account of its principal formal features, but also to situate it within a particular linguistic or national culture. Equally, it is to invite a historical analysis of its evolution over time. It is for this reason that we talk about the English and Italian sonnet, just as we talk about the romantic elegy, the realist novel, the naturalist drama or the symbolist poem. It is this intersection of spatial and temporal elements -the definition of distinct national canons, as well as major artistic movements (although there is frequently an overlap between these two categories) -that means that the genres of works of art are as susceptible to ideological interpretation as their content. This is especially the case in Russian culture, where radical historical discontinuities -say, for instance, the

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