Literature is always influenced by the socio-political environment in which it is created. This makes the exemplary perspective even more exciting: How has literature in Russia and Poland developed since the Enlightenment and Romanticism? What about during Stalinism and in the post-Soviet era? This study book provides a profound introduction to the literature of Eastern Europe in highlights: from Tolstoy to Bulgakov, from Mickiewicz to Stefan Chwin. - Where is Eastern Europe? Mental mapping, Eastern European history, and Slavic studies - Exemplary literatures: Russian and Polish literature in the context of national, East, and Central European (relationship) history - Literature and national identity formation: State and censorship, subversion and emancipation - Enlightenment from above, Romanticism and Realism, Modernism between aesthetic breakthrough and socialist realism, Postmodernism and the new joy of storytelling - Orient.