Amirkhan Eniky’s frontline diaries in the mirror of Russian-Tatar literary relationships

Abstract

The article systematizes information on the history of the diary entries “Front daftarlarennan” (“From Frontline Notebooks”, 1941–1944) by Amirkhan Eniky, which served as a starting point for the creation of his war stories. They were published in the media half a century later, on the 50th anniversary of the Great Victory. In his brief comments, the writer admits that he kept notes secretly while working as an HQ clerk, serving in the guard, in between battles, and he decided to publish them in his declining years, considering their content to be instructive for a new generation. Our analysis of the diary entries reveals their genre and stylistic features. The article proves that their narrative is of discrete nature: it is not a picture of military everyday life that is brought to the fore, but a man’s image of the inner world, pictures of nature, which leads to the transformation of psychologism. In his “notebooks” the writer reflects on life and death, on war as a phenomenon and on human behavior in critical circumstances. The process of national self-knowledge in these frontline notebooks is associated with the process of personal self-knowledge. The artistic fabric of A. Eniky’s diaries includes episodes with prophetic dreams, excerpts from wartime letters, Tatar legends, Turkic proverbs and quotes from the books he had read.