The image of Russian national character in the “criminal” prose of Nikolai Leskov

Abstract

One of the key concepts of modern socio-humanitarian knowledge is the category of national character that has already become a classic. The early 21st century in Russia has seen a steady public and scientific interest in the problems of national identity and self-identification, in the issues of ethnic mentality. In the era of globalisation, topicality of their study is increasing – the study of the problems of the national prevents universal unification. The article analyses the specifics of the Russian national character based on the material of Nikolai Leskov’s work of the 1860s, in particular his “criminal” story “The Drought”. The story was first published in 1862 in the magazine “Century” under the title “The Extinguished case (From my grandfather's notes)”. The story fits into a significant number of Nikolai Leskov’s early works, inspired by the theme of the criminal chronicle and, of course, related to service in Oryol city Chamber of the Criminal Court. Using modern methods of text analysis, including the communicative-pragmatic method, the author of the article comes to the conclusion that peasants act as heroes, by the example of which the writer demonstrates the fundamental features of folkish psychology for him. It is significant that when depicting them, the writer emphasises that the national character has a group, social, rather than individual appearance. In Nikolai Leskov’s works, such situations are quite typical and are most often associated with the moral violence of the masses over a loner. Using verbal, bodily and symbolic images, Nikolai Leskov demonstrates that the causes of the negative features of the Russian national character should be sought primarily in social causes rather than in natural or biological factors.