Generally the classics: Tolstoy, Pushkin, Googol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Nabokov, etc. Look up writers and playwrights associated with the Nihilist Movement if

Generally the classics: Tolstoy, Pushkin, Googol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Nabokov, etc. Look up writers and playwrights associated with the Nihilist Movement if you want the explosive stuff (the writings that would ignite the Revolution many years later), although I can't personally speak for the quality of such works outside the authors I've mentioned. While she didn't write for a Russian audience despite being of Russian descent herself, Ayn Rand's novels certainly have the literary approach of the 19th century Russian novel and the style of 20th century film noir. If you want early science fiction, there's Aelita by Aleksy Tolstoy and We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (with the latter considered the grand-daddy of dystopian fiction as we know it)