Fyodor Sologub was a Russian Symbolist poet, novelist, translator, playwright and essayist. He was the first writer to introduce the morbid, pessimistic elements characteristic of European fin de siècle literature and philosophy into Russian prose.

Russian symbolism was an intellectual, literary and artistic movement predominant at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It arose separately from West European symbolism, and emphasized defamiliarization and the mysticism of Sophiology.