Vse my deti massovoj kul'tury... (siamo tutti figli della cultura di massa...)

The aim of this contribution is to point out some lines of development within so-called mass literature in Russia today. Under the influence of the postmodernist game of contamination and hybridism an intermediate stratum of literary works has come into being; this new area is able to receive genres hat have no connections with Russian literary traditions, such as Fantasy. The tetralogy of Dozory by Sergej Luk’janenko, one of the biggest hits in recent years, is examined as a mirror of the above-mentioned phenomena. In works of this kind, the re-birth of a utopia, deprived of its highest idealistic contents, seems to be the key to their success. The reading public finds an adequate answer to the emotional deficit (so typical of our contemporary society) in these ‘minor genres’; in this way the results of specific internal processes cross national boundaries, testifying at the same time to a global drift towards mass literature. The latter, on account of its internal vitality (and also its proportions), should no longer be marginalized; it is a new phenomenon that requires equally new and appropriate analytical tools.