A ‘small homeland’ in the world context. On Vasily Belov’s early stories

Abstract

Vasily Belov (1932–2012), from his early works appreciated as one of the most gifted among the ‘village prose’ writers, expects to be read today in a changing literary and cultural context. In the Soviet period he was officially criticised for his partiality to the ‘small homeland’ presumably opposed by him to historical progress and innovation, and, on the other hand, blamed for conservatism and xenophobia in his perpetual chase for those whom he found guilty for the decline of the harmony in a countryside Russia. The issues Belov would take in his time and context are not forgotten today but in their present-day actuality look even more urgent and dramatic. ‘The country and the city’ — a recurring problem of historical evolution (R. Williams) stands up in its new significance with a view to what is seen now as a global world fraught with either a new threat or a promising perspective to national cultures.