Demons of the XXth century (typology of destructive characters in Ukrainian and Russian literature)

Abstract

This book is a first attempt to analyze modifications of the concept of devilry in Ukrainian and Russian literature of the twentieth century. The concept has been analyzed in philosophical, sociological and literary context. For this research were chosen texts of Volodymyr Vynnychenko, Valerian Pidmohylnyi, Mykola Kvylovyi, Todos Osmachka, Borys Antonenko-Davydovych, Serhiy Zhadan, Maksym Horkyi, Fedir Solohub, Mykhailo Bulhakov and Andryi Platonov. Precise criteria for determining devilry as a social and cultural phenomenon have been formulated, features of devilry worldview have been addressed and the hierarchy within the structure of devilry has been described. Historical preconditions which influenced the differences in the shaping of the concept of devilry in Russia and Ukraine have been highlighted. Basic distinctions between the development of devilry in both nation’s literature at the first and the second stages of its maturation have also been ascertained. Ways of inclusion and further exclusion of characters within such structures at the first and the second stages of the concept’s exercise have been examined. In the book, devilry is defined as the phenomenon of human self-destructiveness, which expresses itself in the collective mentality through the obsession with social constructionism in the form of utopia combining historical, religious and value-based aspects; through the strive for translating and fetishizing the social ideal and through the activity directed to ruin society and social institutions, to perpetrate violence against people. Several factors that influenced the development of the concept in Ukrainian and Russian literature have been determined. The most influential among those were national myths, bolshevism, traditions of European modernism and national traditions of depiction of devilry in Ukrainian and Russian literature. The most defining work of literature to influence the concept was a novel by Dostoevsky called “Demons”, which was a source of the devilry model. Under this influence, two different concepts of devilry had formed in Ukrainian and Russian literature. It was established that the presented concept has a spiral development. Thus, at the first stage, an individual destructive consciousness is fixed, at the second stage, a group of similar individuals is formed, at the third stage, the state apparatus is formed, which aims to destroy people. The fourth stage is marked by the decline of the governing system and the birth of a new type of destructive person, tangential to the previous one. The presented book will help to understand on the basis of literary material how destructive types of state entities appear and what place a person occupies in them.