After the death of Venedikt Yerofeyev in 1990, his poem Moscow – Petushki has become world-renowned and acclaimed as a Russian postmodern masterpiece. The aim of this thesis is to describe the elements of postmodernism found in the poem, more precisely in the short novel. In his work, Yerofeyev describes the journey of his alter ego, variously called Venia, Venichka, who metaphorically travels through Russian and world literature, history, religion and culture. This anguished, intoxicated journey is full of allusions, genre features, and references from canonical works of Russian and world literature. Thus, intertextuality is an unavoidable postmodernist element present in the poem. Furthermore, this (pseudo) autobiographical work can serve as an example of Bakhtin’s carnivalized literature as it bursts with irony, grotesque, bodily, parody and profanation. In addition to the specific features of postmodernism in Yerofeyev's poem, this thesis deals with the development of postmodernist literature in Russia, and focuses on the differences between Russian postmodernism and postmodernism in the West. To be more specific, certain historical and social circumstances that influenced the different developmental path of Russian postmodernism are described in the first part of this thesis.