Clemens Günther, Ph.D, Freie Universität Berlin, is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for East European Studies. His research interests comprise the late and post-Soviet historical novel, the cultural history of cybernetics, climate fiction, and the ecological poetics of Russian realism.Matthias Schwartz, Ph.D, is co-head of the program area World Literature at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL) in Berlin, Germany. His research interests include Eastern European socialist and post-socialist literatures, memory cultures, and popular cultures in a comparative perspective.

• ContentsAcknowledgementsList of FiguresNotes on ContributorsIntroductionFirsthand TimeClemens Günther and Matthias SchwartzPart 1: Exposing a Painful Past: Modes of Testimony1 “Document of the Soul:” Varlam Shalamov’s Documentary Writing in a Contemporary ContextFranziska Thun-Hohenstein2 A Dreyfus Affair for Soviet Children: on the Encoded Poetics of Aleksandra Brushtein’s Documentary ProseNatasha Gordinsky3 Supplementing Evidence: Danilo Kiš’s Poet(h)ics in the Context of Yugoslav Documentarism of the 1960sTatjana Petzer4 Hands of Time and Large Numbers in Alexander Kluge’s (Post-)Documentary LiteratureGunther MartensPart 2: Discovering the Self and the Other: Modes of Expressing Individuality5 Celebration and Abstraction: the Documentary Mode of Jonas Mekas’s Diary FilmsChristian Zehnder6 Documentary and Poetics Interwoven: Mikhail Kalik’s CinemaElena Nekrasova7 The Technique of Documenting: on the Early Reportages of Ryszard Kapuściński and Hanna KrallMatthias SchwartzPart 3: Refining the Senses: Modes of Self-Reflective Artistic Practices8 “Dramas of the Fact:” Soviet Conceptualisations of Documentary Theatre in the 1960sAnna Hodel9 “Instead of Approximate Precision—Precise Approximation:” Ian Satunovskii’s Poor PoetryGeorg Witte10 Reproductions without an Original: the Self-Published Aesthetics of Cold War-Era CopiesSarah A. BurgosPart 4: Exploring the Everyday: Modes of Perceiving Social Issues11 The Trials of Documenting: Frida Vigdorova’s Notes of the Brodsky Court ProceedingsAnja Tippner12 The Poetry of Mikhail Sokovnin: an Aesthetic Opposition to the “Literature of Fact”Ilya Kukulin13 “Discourses of Sobriety:” Documentary Aesthetics in Conceptual Art in the United StatesRenate WöhrerIndex