Orthodoxy and the Russian National Idea in V.I. Alekseev’s Works

Abstract

For the first time, the article attempts to identify the cultural aspect of V.I. Alekseev’s creative legacy and to introduce the fictional prose of this author into the scientific discourse. This will allow to better represent the complex scope of Russian literature abroad and to deepen its analysis as a cultural phenomenon. V.I. Alekseev (1906—2002) was a writer of the second wave of Russian emigration, who is nowadays almost unknown in his motherland. Meanwhile, his works are a significant part of our national culture, which deserve the attention of Russian readers and researchers for a number of reasons. First of all, this is a specific perspective in which the writer sees and reflects the reality. Alekseev views the national history through an unbreakable bond of the Russian national idea and Orthodoxy. Secondly, it is the complexity and significance of the period of Russian history Alekseev writes about. The action in his works, reflecting primarily the author’s personal life experience, takes place in the USSR during the interwar years, as well as on the both opposing sides on the front line during the Great Patriotic War and in the West (mainly in Germany) soon after the end of the Second World War. The article describes the peculiarities of the individual style of the author, who, undoubtedly, had great literary skills. There are identified and represented Alekseev’s three main ways of central idea developing in his main work of fiction — the dilogy “Invisible Russia” (1952) and “Soldierly Russia” (1954). The genre nature of this work is revealed. The complex analysis of the creative legacy of Alekseev is given in the article in correlation with his biography. The writer’s life journey, also almost unknown to the average Russian reader, is exposed to light, partly on the basis of resources difficult to access (introductions to the emigrant editions of the middle of the 20th century, emigrant press of the same period), partly through the reconstruction made by the author of the article, basing on the autobiographic works of Alekseev. The list of sources includes rare, hardly accessible materials and may serve as an additional characteristic of the writer’s creative legacy.