An emigrant, a repatriate, a foreigner in the Ukrainian and Bulgarian detectives in the fifth-eighth decades of the 20th century

Abstract

The article is a part of the study of colonial strategy creating by the Soviet Union by means of the mass literature ideologems. The cognitive and emotional images of emigrants, repatriates and foreigners are considered in the context of ideologization of the “insider” / “stranger” opposition and these images are endowed with a complex of guilt. Chronologically, emigration in a Ukrainian detective story is associated with two events sacralized by social realism — the Bolshevik revolution and the Second World War (themythologems of “the Great October Revolution” and “the Great Patriotic War”). Respectively, the reasons for emigration in detectives are escape from the Soviet justice (uenerovitses, “banderovitses”, collaborators) and export by deception (ostarbeiters) which forms two types of characters. The first type was considered as ideological opponents therefore their images are dehumanized by hypertrophied sadism, focusing on profit, lack of feelings that turns enemies of the Soviet system into enemies of humanity. The second type is the image of the victim, which is punished all his life, since he did not return to his homeland. A characteristic component of the emigrant image is his inferiority.The Bulgarian detective story of this period has the same mythological structure which was transferredready and was adjusted, that is shown by time structure of texts (the sacralization of September, 1944 is complemented with fragments of “the October myth”). Images of emigrants, repatriates, and foreigners in the Bulgarian detective story demonstrate as reproduction of the Soviet pattern (immoral enemies of humanity; emigrant = spy) so withdrawal from it.The novelty is representation of attempts to cross the border of socialist Bulgaria (passport regime violation and “non-return”); and the social and age list of the fugitives: among them there are young citizens of the socialist country suffering from the lack of realization of their ambitions and even children of the “revolution legends”, which undermine the main myth.Thus, it is shown that the Ukrainian and Bulgarian detective stories adopt the mythologems of social realism, which are transformed in the national context, as well as the crisis of mythologism is observed in the Bulgarian detective story.