ON HUMANITARIANISM AND HUMANISM: LINGUISTIC AND STYLISTIC FEATURES OF THE STATEMENTS OF THE LEADERS OF LITERARY GROUPS IN THE EARLY 1930S (based on the responses of Leopold Averbakh, Maxim Gorky, Viktor Shklovsky to the death of Vladimir Mayakovsky)

Abstract

The suicide of Vladimir Mayakovsky, the prophet of the revolution, its «agitator, bawler ringleader», which occurred in 1930, when the fate of the fi rst fi ve-year plan was being decided, coincided with a turning point in the Soviet Union’s sociopolitical life. This death, as well as the former suicide of Sergei Yesenin, impressed the society dramatically – it rocked the social optimism of the builders of socialism, besmirching the prospects. The responses of Leopold Averbakh, Maxim Gorky and Viktor Shklovsky to the tragic event reveal their assessment of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s work and their attitude to him as a person and a bearer of a certain worldview. These responses are important documents of the time, because they revealed the moral traits of the leaders of the literary life of the country, those who were later called «engineers of human souls». The analysis of statements about Vladimir Mayakovsky’s death, undertaken for the fi rst time in this article, reveals the «style» of the era of socialist reconstruction, in which there are no ways to express sympathy for a person: the poet’s tragedy became an occasion for polemics with class enemies (Leopold Averbakh), for edifying teaching (Maxim Gorky), for playing self-justifi cation (Viktor Shklovsky). The «slogan», «educational» and «game» principles represent the triumphant «humanitarianism» of the public consciousness of the era, understood as a form of «social domination» that provides people with «words» of the position of the arbiters of human destinies. In these relations, there are no concepts characteristic of a patriarchal society that include words and concepts to explain the principle of functioning of the social organism in the categories of «humanity», understood as «moral», «conscientious», «cordial», «sincere», not happening from the mind, but from the action of the «spirit».