“The Great Terror” in the Contemporary British Novel

Abstract

The mythological image of Russia in British fiction has been historically shaped and recurrently repeated for many centuries. Between the late 20 th and the early 21 st centuries the image of Russia and the Soviet Union was widely used by the authors of detective, adventure, etc. fiction, but it was also taken up by the leading British writers. The Great Terror of the Stalin epoch was described in a number of fiction and non-fiction books of the early 21 st century. The author analyses novels of three British authors devoted to the topic: House of Meetings (2006) by Martin Amis, The Siege (2001) and The Betrayal (2010) by Helen Dunmore, and The Noise of Time (2016) by Julian Barnes. The three authors clearly show their profound knowledge of Russian and Soviet history and culture, but their points of view on them, as well as their estimation of the country’s future, are different. Both M. Amis and his protagonist are sure that the whole country is a “big zona” without any historical future. Conversely, H. Dunmore is sure that the great terror did not annihilate the country’s potential, and the sources of inspiration for the Russian people lie in the country’s great culture, great city (Leningrad), and great country. J. Barnes’s novel is a brief biography of D. Shostakovich, but it is also a reflection on an artist’s existence under totalitarian pressure. Thus, the three British writers look at a concrete period of Soviet history from different, sometimes opposite, points of view, and come to different conclusions.