Mikhail Kuzmin’s (1872-1936) Wings (Kryl’ia, 1906) was published in a radical era of transition in Russia: Wings is the first homosexual Russian novel, spurring shock and disapproval in literary circles and readers. The semi-autobiographical Wings reflects Mikhail Kuzmin’s own conflicts with the revolutionary upheaval around him. Kuzmin’s novel is in search of a new community defined by its focus on a subjective form of reading and study of texts, images, and languages outside of the general Russian readership. Through Wings, Kuzmin grasps his readership with a textual montage of sensations that sets itself in opposition to other texts and the political newspapers of the period. My project seeks to define how Wings desires to create community in its readership, ushering a revolution unlike the political 1905 Russian Revolution. This research will draw from careful reading of Kuzmin’s diaries and correspondence, as well as the writings of his closest associates among the literary and artistic circles in which he moved. Furthermore, I seek to analyze the formal features of Kuzmin's prose that bears a strong resemblance to Soviet experiments in filmic montage that aimed to leverage the relationship between image and affect to create a new Soviet viewership. This project is in progress throughout the 2024 academic year and will contribute to my honors thesis in Russian and East European Studies.