Against the background of the constraints of Soviet legacy, the paper concentrates on contemporary, post-Soviet tendencies in literary studies in Russia, and especially on poststructuralism. Four dominant trends within post-Soviet literary theory are distinguished: semiotics, traditional literary studies (including historical and theoretical poetics, textual studies drawing from structuralism, narratology, comparative studies and Bakhtin’s theory), "new religiosity" and, finally, poststructuralism and cultural studies inspired by Western influences, but adapted to the Russian context. The latter developments are discussed in the paper in greater detail.