About

Vadim Shneyder is an Associate Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Slavic, East European & Eurasian Languages & Cultures at UCLA. He earned his Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Yale University in 2015, after completing his M.Phil. at Yale in 2013 and his B.A. in Global Studies with a concentration in Russian and Post-Soviet Studies from the College of William and Mary in 2009. His research focuses on Russian literature of the age of realism, spanning roughly the second half of the nineteenth century, and its relation to its intellectual, social, and ideological contexts both in the Russian Empire and Europe. Beyond nineteenth-century prose, his interests extend to European and Russian philosophy, aesthetic theory, Soviet literature and film, and national and cultural identity in Eastern Europe. He authored the book "Russia’s Capitalist Realism: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov," published by Northwestern University Press in 2020, which investigates how Russian realist prose confronted the challenges of nascent capitalism and contributed to ongoing public discourse about economic and social change. His work emphasizes the ideological and formal aspects of literature, exploring how fiction articulates historical change and responds to evolving conditions. Shneyder's scholarship aims to reconcile formalist and historicist approaches, examining how literature both reflects and influences the understanding of historical processes.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Economic history
• History
• Psychology
• Philosophy
• Ancient history

Selected publications

• Other Russian Nineteenth-Century Literatures. Introduction

  Slavic Literatures · 2025-11-20

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Not a Novel at All, but Simply a Catalogue of Things: The Dehumanization of the Novel in Petr Boborykin’s Kitai-Gorod

  Slavic Literatures · 2025-10-28

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Zhizn' tvorimogo romana: Ot avanteksta k kontekstu “Anny Kareninoi” by MikhailDolbilov. Nauchnaia biblioteka. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2023. 704 pp. ₽900.00. ISBN 978‐5‐4448‐1970‐8

  The Russian Review · 2025-04-25

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Soiuz 17 oktobria. Politicheskii klass Rossii: vzlet i padenie, by Kirill Solov’ev

  Canadian-American Slavic Studies · 2024-10-14

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Goncharov in the Twenty‐First Century By IngridKleespies, LyudmilaParts. Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures, and History. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2021, xxviii + 234 pp. $109.00. ISBN 978‐1‐64469‐698‐9

  The Russian Review · 2023-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Other Russian Nineteenth-Century Literatures

  2023

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • History
  • Political Science
  PublisherDOI

• Recording Russia: Trying to Listen in the Nineteenth Century. By Gabriella Safran. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022. ix, 288 pp. Notes. Index. Photographs. $44.95, hard bound.

  Slavic Review · 2023-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Recording Russia: Trying to Listen in the Nineteenth Century. By Gabriella Safran. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022. ix, 288 pp. Notes. Index. Photographs. $44.95, hard bound. - Volume 82 Issue 4

  PublisherDOI

• Not a Novel at All, But Simply a Catalogue of Things: The Dehumanization of the Novel in Petr Boborykin's Kitai-Gorod

  2023

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Psychology
  • Philosophy
  PublisherDOI

• Money

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-02-16

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Vadim Shneyder provides a financial biography of Chekhov as an upwardly mobile freelance literary laborer against the backdrop of Russia’s economic expansion and transition to a money-driven economy. Shneyder traces the rapid development of industrialization in Russia in the 1890s, driven largely by the expansion of the rail network, and examines how this new environment both appears in Chekhov’s works and shaped the conditions of their production.

  PublisherDOI

• Literary Biographies in The Lives of Remarkable People Series in Russia: Biography for the Masses by Ludmilla A.Trigos and CarolUeland, eds. Crosscurrents: Russia’s Literature in Context. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2022. x + 339 pp. ISBN 978‐1‐7936‐1829‐0

  The Russian Review · 2023-05-18

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Dasha Hakunova

  2 shared

• Victor Osimitz

  2 shared

• Erin Alpert

  2 shared

• Mary

  2 shared

• Peter Thomas

  2 shared

• Valerie Hopkins

  1 shared

• Daniil Leiderman

  Mitchell Institute

  1 shared

• J. N. Morris

  University of Georgia

  1 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Slavic Languages and Literatures

  Yale University

  2015

Awards & honors

• Shortlisted for the 2021 American Association of Teachers of…