It is fitting to begin an examination of satire with a paradox and Russian literary history presents a fine one: although major works that might be classified as satire according to traditional genre definitions are rather rare in twentieth-century Russian literature, the satirical impulse permeates and reticulates throughout Russian prose of the modern period. Satire — understood as a manner of writing, a mode rather than a genre — offers critical and persuasive force that is central to much of contemporary Russian literature. In arguing for perceiving satire as a modality rather than a form, we lay the groundwork for a critical structure far more inclusive than that endorsed by Riazanov's character (quoted above). He is certainly right in noting that no contemporary writers have donned the mantles of Gogol′ or Saltykov-Shchedrin, but he ignores the satirical and ironic spirit that in fact characterizes much of contemporary Russian writing.

Satirists of the post-Stalin era trace their lineage not only to nineteenth-century classics like Gogol′ and Saltykov-Shchedrin, but to writers of the so-called “Golden Age” of Soviet satire that developed in the relatively liberal decade following the Revolution.