If Great Dead Writers Were on Facebook - 2

In my first story of these series, I've tackled five Russian writers. Since there are a lot more, some of whom might be less known to the English-language readers, I wanted to do another installment. As a reminder, the Facebook art here is generated by MAIK (My AI Kompanion, as I call it) showing off its improved capacities as ChatGPT-5. So, here's some more Russian writers' imaginary posts on Facebook, with an explanatory setup:

1. Lermontov

A younger contemporary of Pushkin, who also died by a duel, Lermontov was exiled to the Caucuses by the tsarist regime for his dissenting views and dangerous behavior. One of his most famous poems is The Sail, a poignant and elegant metaphor for someone who is lost at sea. It resonates with many people who are experiencing nostalgia for their homeland. Here's MAIK's rendition of that nostalgia:

For your reference, here is a good parallel translation of the poem I've found on the Northwestern University's translation project website:

2. Turgenev

Turgenev, another pillar of classical Russian literature is probably not as widely known in the West as Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. His most fundamental work was the novel Fathers and Sons about the eternal generational gap problems. This is the imagined announcement post of the novel's first issue.

My favorite work by Turgenev, however, is the poignant and enduring short story MUMU about a dog as a symbol of serfdom, available here in English as an audio version:

3. Gogol

Gogol was a Ukrainian writing in Russian due to the economic and political pressures of the Russian empire. He is arguably the first Russian-language classical writer who excelled in horror derived from Ukrainian folklore. Elsewhere, I wrote about the Soviet horror movies where 1967 Viy, based on Gogol's horror tales, is still holding its own. Here I present a teaser by Gogol contemplating the story plot for it:

4. Bulgakov

Bulgakov was another writer who can be claimed by both Russians and Ukrainians. Even though he lived a big part of his life in Kyiv, he wrote in Russian and apparently was secretly admired by Stalin. Many experts believe that The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov's most acclaimed novel, was written specifically for Stalin with an appeal to be more lenient to dissident writers many of whom were put in jails and psychiatric hospitals during the Stalin's era. Here's how I asked MAIK to imagine Bulgakov's conceiving the novel's beginning episode:

My favorite work by Bulgakov is Heart of A Dog, a biting satire of Bolshevism and revolutionaries. As someone who writes satire, I highly recommend it if you've never read it before. Here's an audio version of it in English:

5. Pasternak

I've mentioned Pasternak as a genius translator into English but he was also a brilliant writer in his own right, awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 (never received it because of the pressures from the Soviet government). In fact, he is perhaps better known as a writer in the West, due to the popularity of his Doctor Zhivago novel. Here's our FB post alluding to the notorious train ride through Siberia described in the novel:

As a bonus, here's a meta-post referencing Doctor Zhivago's death:

6. Nabokov

Moving to the second half of the 20th century, I wanted to include Nabokov, the author of the notorious Lolita novel. I asked MAIK to make the first comment to the post by Epstein but was met with the firm refusal. So instead we compromised on a non-existent pedophile who chimes in with his comment to the writer's question:

This has been the second installment of If Great Dead Writers Were on Facebook. Stay tuned for more, please.