ISLAMIC EAST IN THE INTERPRETATION OF RUSSIAN WRITERS: A COMPARATIVE REVIEW OF FANTASTIC AND REALIST TEXTS
Abstract
This review article examines how Russian writers have imagined, described, and ideologically framed the “Islamic East” across two broad literary modes - fantastic (romantic “Eastern tales,” demonological narratives, fairy-tale orientalism, and exoticized adventure plots) and realist (travel writing, historical prose, and psychologically detailed war narratives). Treating “Islamic East” not as a stable geographic unit but as a culturally coded literary construct, the article surveys the key representational patterns through which Muslim societies of the Caucasus, Crimea, the Volga–Ural region, and Central Asia are incorporated into Russian
literary worldmaking
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