The name Sofia Gubaidulina is typically not associated with serial music, but she experimented with the technique early in her career and never returned to it. This paper situates Gubaidulina's serial music in the context of the Soviet avant-garde of the 1960s, examines her use of serial techniques, and discusses her reasons for ultimately abandoning the technique. Gubaidulina was one of the last of her generation to experiment with serialism, and she produced only a few works that used the technique. Her earliest attempts at serial music appear in the sonata for piano (1965) and the five etudes for harp, percussion, and double bass (1965). The cantata A night in Memphis (1968) represents her most thorough exploration of the technique. Remnants of serialism can be found in some of her works of the early 1970s. In this paper, I will examine two of the five etudes and selections from A night in Memphis. I conclude by looking briefly at works from the early 1970s that are not serial per se, but show residue of the technique.