Outstanding Humanists of the 19th Century, Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin and Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, offer us in our present day, from their anti-historical antiquity, actual thoughts on state power – from its abuses and abuses. In our previous articles, we drew attention to the analysis of the problems of statehood in the novels of FM Dostoevsky, and we will turn to this topic – and now we will concentrate on the thoughts of the famous associate Dostoevsky on the democratic movement in culture – ME. Saltykov-Shchedrin. The purpose of the article is an analysis, on the example of creativity M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, the attitude of the government to society and man – through the prism of distortions of the civil service and public administration. The author of the article puts forward the corresponding tasks: to follow the peculiarities of the state-management biography of ME Saltykov-Shchedrin; understand Shchedrin's philosophy of history; to pay attention to the cardinal problems of the social structure of the state, autocratic-bureaucratic power – which are put and resolved by the writer; to explore grotesque and symbolic image of Saltykov-Shchedrin social and state-management pyramids; trace the artistic satirical analysis of images of public executives. All his artistic gift, «all the forces of his mind and heart,» as at the end of life, ME will say about himself. Saltykov-Shchedrin in a semi-auto-biogagic fairy tale «An Adventure with Kramolnikov», he is a «seditious writer» – given his cause for the revival of a «spoiled homeland», the cause of involving the people in conscious political activity, the awakening of the reader's sense of personal responsibility for the unstable course of national history and modern times . With all the extraordinary complexity of the original «azopic manner» of his satirical story, the inner, hidden content of his satire in general was quite clear, so that – from year to year, for many decades – to cause anxiety and admiration for others. Roman Saltykov-Shchedrin is also called «satirical chronicle» and «political pamphlet.» In it, the writer «azopovsky language» critically transmitted the history of their state. The whole reality of the city of Glypova and its management are contrary to normal human life; its rulers – angry, brutal dolls, their goal – the destruction of everything thinking. Thus, the mayors in the Saltykov-Shchedrin novel are completely inappropriate individuals who are not capable of managing any state structure and should not be in power or power at all. All their actions – contradictory and meaningless. One comes to the place of another, but in the life of the people nothing changes. All public administrators in «History of one city» have the following common features: foolishness, self-control, greed, corruption, despotism, immorality. Externally, they are «humanoid», and internally saturated only by thirst for profit in any way. Shchedrin, undoubtedly, is a follower of MV in the image of an ugly society and ugly state administration. Gogol In the «Dead Souls» of Gogol, the world seems to split in two: two realities coexist simultaneously – «poetic» and «prosaic»; it is Russia with its talented, full-fledged creative forces, the people – and the autocratic feudal empire, which put the brand of deformity. The crisis experienced by the state, according to Gogol, has reached such a degree that the question arises of the further existence of the state. And the direct follower of Gogol's case is Shchedrin. Satire M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin was on the side of those who fought for the triumph of justice and truth. The writer believed in the destruction of a stupid way of life, in the victory of the immortal ideas of true humanistic progress. «Carthage must be destroyed!» – as if the writer calls: «Carthage» of state silly tyranny, arbitrariness, totalitarianism, antihumanity.
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Jan 1, 2023
Sergey Kamolov + 2
Open Access
