This thesis aims to analyze Andrei Bitov's novel Pushkin House (completed in 1971, first published in 1979 in the United States) as an example of postmodernist reflexive fiction in the tradition of Russian literature.
The following devices found in the novel are analyzed in detail: intertextuality of the text, intertextuality in the titles of chapters and epigraphs, mixture of genres in the novel, "postmodernist" nature of the main character, symbolic use of mathematical formulas and numbers, undermining the conventional role of the author in the novel, and use of parody (Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of "Carnival").
The conclusion is that in spite of being postmodernist in form, Pushkin House should not be read simply as a work following the models of western postmodernism. Its real significance can only be understood by an appreciation of its place in the tradition of Russian literature and in the specific social and political context of Andrei Bitov's contemporary Soviet Union. The thesis argues that the very postmodernist qualities of the novel convey a "message" (however indirect) to the author's contemporaries who have shared in its historical and socio-political contexts.