“Nravstvenniki” or “Derevenshiki” (Village Prose Writers) as Phenomenon of the Russian Spiritual Revival

Abstract

The article researches the legacy of the “nravstvenniki” (village prose writers) as an important phenomenon of the Russian spiritual revival in the second half of the twentieth century. It examines the original view based on the millennia-long experience of peasant life, taken by the “village prose” on the fate of a person facing the destruction of the Russian Orthodox civilization. This experience uniquely combines the Christian soul and the “cosmic” (sobornost’-people-nature) conscience, which allows to immediately and unerringly feel and deeply understand any untruth of the existence. This truly is the latest word of the great Russian literature, not in the chronological sense, since another era is already upon us, but in the sense of revealing the last foundations of the “Russian point of view” (V. Woolf) to the world. The main storyline of the “village prose” was the death of the great Orthodox civilization and the perpetuation of the images of its living members surviving into the second half of the twentieth century. This prompted Viktor Astafyev to call it a unique “global phenomenon born out of the suff ering and misfortunes of the people”. The experience of the literature of “nravstvenniki” (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn), however, also showed the reality of the Orthodox revival of the Russian people, prophesying on this moral basis a new revival of Russia. The article off ers several representative examples of works that enable the reader to understand the spiritual meaning and signifi cance of this literary phenomenon and to appreciate the worldwide historical task it tried to solve: to comprehend both the greatness of the Orthodox peasant civilization and the tragedy of its destruction. The most prominent critique and literary reviews on the “village prose” are also considered. The article ends with substantiating the conclusion of this literary phenomenon becoming the newest Russian classics, corresponding to the most important and urgent tasks of the spiritual revival of Russia and creating a new “canon” of Russian Christian literature of the twenty-first century.