Why is Russian literature so great?

I have a strong interest in Russian history....so I took a stab at it. Answer was short. Consistent with attention span on Quora.

A long and persistent history of suffering.

Russia has an incredibly rich national story that is replete with famines, land based slavery (serfdom). power abuse by strongmen, miserable winters, peasant revolts, dangerous misuse of social engineering, civil wars, foreign invasions, purges, Gulags and a chronic suppression of minority rights. Dull moments are rare.

Painful as this it provides for a narrative backdrop that is incredibly rich and serves as a conduit through which the struggles that define the human condition can be played out.

All of the Great Russian writers - Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Gorky, Chekov and Solzhenitsyn - have taken advantage of this historical tapestry to truly and authentically delve into the nature of what it is to be a person.