Village Prose Research Articles

Sociocultural discourse of the theory of socialist realism and its reflection in village prose

In the work, in the light of the dominant ideas of modern cultural studies, the issues of reflecting the principles of socialist realist art in the artistic texts of the so-called “village prose”, in particular, in the works of V. Shukshin, are considered. Based on the analysis of the early Shukshin stories, it is shown that, contrary to established ideas, the canons of the theory and practice of the art of socialist realism did not restrict the creative freedom of the bright Soviet novelist, did not conflict with his author's will and creative task. It is demonstrated that Shukshin’s stories of the 1960s and 1970s, unlike the avant-garde trends of underground literature of those years, remained in the general mainstream of socialist realism literature, without opposing it. On the contrary, in the historical situation of the heyday and strengthening of socialism, the rustic writer continued to work in the tradition of realistic literature, on the one hand, inheriting classical foundations, on the other hand, at the creative level expanding the boundaries of ideological, thematic and moral-psychological principles of socialist realism literature.

Ch. Aitmatov and the Russian traditionalist prose of the 1960s–1970s (on the 95th anniversary of the writer’s birth)

INTRODUCTION. Ch.T. Aitmatov (1928–2008) is a major writer whose work was originally associated with Kyrgyzstan, was widely known in the Soviet Union, and recognized by the world cultural community. His prose is associated with several directions and trends in Russian Soviet literature. The purpose of the study is to draw parallels between Aitmatov’s works of the 1960–1980s and Russian traditionalist literature of that time, to establish the degree of poetic “kinship” between phenomena belonging to different national cultures.MATERIALS AND METHODS. The research material is Ch. Aitmatov’s stories “My Poplar in a Red Scarf”, “Mother’s Field”, the novel “Stormy Stop”, F. Abramov’s novel “Home”, V. Astafiev’s stories, V. Shukshin’s stories. The main methods of studying the material are comparative typological, historical and genetic; a mythopoetic approach to the analysis of literary works is also used.RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. It has been established that Ch. Aitmatov’s prose is related to “industrial literature”, to “lyrical prose”, to “youth literature”. The connections between Aitmatov’s stories and novels and “village prose” turn out to be closer. The desire to preserve memory, traditions, and archetypes of behavior characteristic of the centuries-old culture of the Kyrgyz people is of great importance for the heroes of Ch. Aitmatov’s stories and novels. This trend also characterizes Russian traditionalist literature of the 1960–1980s, which declared the need for a careful attitude towards Russian national traditions. In many respects, the images of the main characters and the mythological motifs of the works of Ch. Aitmatov and the Russian “villages” turn out to be consonant and comparable in a number of parameters. Significant similarities were revealed in the perception of the native land and fields in the works of the “villagers” and Ch. Aitmatov, in the depiction of ambiguous socio-ethical processes in Soviet society of the 1960–1980s, in the understanding of the processes of corrosion of a national character.CONCLUSION. Prose by Ch.T. Aitmatov is close to various currents of Russian literature of the twentieth century in its characteristic humanistic orientation, in its attention to the hero involved in solving acute social and ethical problems of the time. Ch. Aitmatov’s prose is characterized by a poetic “kinship” with the traditionalist direction of Russian literature, manifested in genre, composition, figurative, ideological analogies and correspondences between phenomena belonging to different national cultures. They are brought together by the image of the mother earth, an attempt to rehabilitate and preserve the archetypes of national ethics, to integrate them into modernity full of contradictions. It seems promising to further study the parallels between Ch. Aitmatov’s prose and Russian traditionalist literature in order to determine the national identity of the writers’ artistic worlds and clarify the origins of the commonality of their concepts of the world and man.

Unknown Words (Agnonyms) in Russian Village Prose and Their Translations into English (Linguocultural Aspect)

Unknown Words (Agnonyms) in Russian Village Prose and Their Translations into English (Linguocultural Aspect)

“Nravstvenniki” or “Derevenshiki” (Village Prose Writers) as Phenomenon of the Russian Spiritual Revival

The article researches the legacy of the “nravstvenniki” (village prose writers) as an important phenomenon of the Russian spiritual revival in the second half of the twentieth century. It examines the original view based on the millennia-long experience of peasant life, taken by the “village prose” on the fate of a person facing the destruction of the Russian Orthodox civilization. This experience uniquely combines the Christian soul and the “cosmic” (sobornost’-people-nature) conscience, which allows to immediately and unerringly feel and deeply understand any untruth of the existence. This truly is the latest word of the great Russian literature, not in the chronological sense, since another era is already upon us, but in the sense of revealing the last foundations of the “Russian point of view” (V. Woolf) to the world. The main storyline of the “village prose” was the death of the great Orthodox civilization and the perpetuation of the images of its living members surviving into the second half of the twentieth century. This prompted Viktor Astafyev to call it a unique “global phenomenon born out of the suff ering and misfortunes of the people”. The experience of the literature of “nravstvenniki” (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn), however, also showed the reality of the Orthodox revival of the Russian people, prophesying on this moral basis a new revival of Russia. The article off ers several representative examples of works that enable the reader to understand the spiritual meaning and signifi cance of this literary phenomenon and to appreciate the worldwide historical task it tried to solve: to comprehend both the greatness of the Orthodox peasant civilization and the tragedy of its destruction. The most prominent critique and literary reviews on the “village prose” are also considered. The article ends with substantiating the conclusion of this literary phenomenon becoming the newest Russian classics, corresponding to the most important and urgent tasks of the spiritual revival of Russia and creating a new “canon” of Russian Christian literature of the twenty-first century.

“Village prose” in the context of conflict between the traditional russian culture and the soviet modernity

The article is devoted to analysis of the works of the so-called village prose (F. Abramov, V. Shukshin, V. Rasputin, A. Solzhenitsyn) in the decolonial perspective using the concept of internal colonization. The characteristics of this concept and its heuristic potential are given. The application of semiotic method - distinction of markers - allowed the authors to determine the points of divergence in the socialist realism poetics and the village prose. It is shown that the village prose plots do not fit into the soviet ideological narratives, while the key narrative of the modern thinking - progress - in the artistic world of the village text testifies to the destruction of Russian village and the Russian peasantry. It is revealed that F. Abramov's application of the deconstruction method allowed to revaluate the narratives that are important for the soviet ideology. In V. Shukshins stories we have found an opposition of modernity - traditionalism, which serves as a precondition for the comic. It allows us to identify a subordinate position of a villager-peasant, irrelevant in the world of modernity.

POCHVENNICHESTVO AND SYMBOLIC REALISM OF V. P. ASTAFIEV AND V. G. RASPUTIN

Since the beginning of the 21 century, when leading villagers (Astafiev, Belov, Rasputin) began to leave one after another, and it became easier for versifiers from different ideological positions to criticize their works, there was a need to protect village prose — the leading literary trend of the second half of the twentieth century. To do this, literary critics began to resurrect ideological attitudes (that were in demand in times of crisis to stabilize national consciousness), but not always justifiably, which caused a new wave of denial. The purpose of this article is to verify the existing and identify new approaches to village prose and poetics of its leading representatives in a similar context. The understanding of the subject in the context of traditionalism and conservatism is critically rechecked. The task of studying the poetics of such leading literary masters as Astafiev, Rasputin, comes to the fore from the point of view of the implementation in their artistic method of the “pochvennichestvo” ideology, most deeply rooted in the peasant-agricultural worldview. The author’s tasks include the verification of the terminological content of pochvennichestvo, its historical genesis in the works of Dostoevsky, the coupling of the pochvennichestvo theory and literature, as well as its modifications in the “new pochvennichestvo” by Astafiev, Rasputin and other masters of village prose. First and foremost, research material included the new artistic method of symbolic realism, where the key ideologeme “earth–soil” has found implementation in the image-symbol of Mother Earth, the primary basis for this literary trend. This position is proven through the analysis of the poetics of Astafiev and Rasputin, whose new method and its key image-symbol have acquired a vivid artistic individualization. Nevertheless, as a result, the author of the article comes to the conclusion that one should not limit the artistic ideology of Astafiev or Rasputin to any one direction of philosophical thought, since the poetics of these artists is complex and multifaceted.

Father and His Family (Genre Originality of L. Petrushevskaya’s Story “The New Robinsons”, 1989)

The article deals with the genre originality of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya's story ‘The New Robinsons’. The story, first published in 1989, masquerades as a Robinsonade, a dystopia, and a sample of village prose (with its admiration for the peasants and peasant women of pre-revolutionary times), but the true goal of Petrushevskaya is much more ambitious: the story is an invariant of the biblical story about the rebirth of humankind after a global catas-trophe. The very title of the story directly indicates the genre of robinsonade. One can easily single out elements of dystopia in the story with the help of text analysis, as well as inter-textual references to the prose of village writers (mainly, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Val-entin Rasputin). The key phrase of the story ‘The New Robinsons’ refers to biblical sources: ‘There was a boy and a girl for the continuation of the human race.’ In this light, it becomes clear why Petrushevskaya, seemingly casually, reports that the narrator’s father once in-jured ‘in the thigh’ and remained forever lame. It is a reference to Jacob, who was once in-jured ‘in the thigh’ when he fought with God. He, just like the narrator’s father, spent most of his life on the run, and was the one, from whom the twelve tribes of the Jewish people eventually originated.

«Родня по Отечеству»: А. Солженицын в восприятии В. Астафьева (на материале писем и публицистики)

The article examines the view, assessment, interpretation of the personality scale, the direction of A. Solzhenitsyn’s work in the letters and journalism of V. Astafiev. The importance of the research is due to the attention of modern literary criticism to the historiosophical and socio-political issues of Russian prose, the necessity to research the creations of Russian literature of the 20th century in its brightest performances and assessments. The purpose of the research is an attempt to determine the similarity of aesthetic positions, which became the basis for assessing and interpreting the personality and work of A. Solzhenitsyn in the V. Astafiev’s epistolary and journalism. The publications of letters and journalism by V. Astafyev, the writer’s reaction to publication of the first story by A. Solzhenitsyn are analyzed. The main arguments of V. Astafyev’s letter in defense of A. Solzhenitsyn, the motives for applying to the Writers’ Union are considered. V. Astafyev’s reaction to the “Vermont hermit” return to Russia is considered, the scale of A. Solzhenitsyn’s personality is characterized, and his public position is assessed. As a result of the analysis, it is established that in the letters and journalism of V. Astafiev a vivid image of A. Solzhenitsyn is created as an unbending fighter, an authoritative thinker, one of the founders of village prose, a patriot of Russia. It is concluded that the creative behavior of the writer V. Astafiev is determined by the specifics of his personality, the characteristics of his marital status, and the socio-political life of Russia in the 1960s – 1990s. The scope of application of the work results is research on the modern literature, teaching literature in higher and secondary schools.

Типология композиции в деревенской прозе ХХ века

The purpose of this article is to give an idea of the typology of compositional forms in Russian literature of the last century on the example of the leading literary trend of the second half of the twentieth century, the Village prose, in which compositional organization was of priority importance in comparison with the plot. Understanding the composition as the internal structure of the work, the author of the article aims to prove its importance in the organization of the artistic whole. The tasks of the author of this work include consideration of such key types of composition for the Village prose as circular, associative, temporal (retrospective, anachronistic) ones, composition of off-plot elements, etc. This problem is solved on the basis of the study of the works by V.P. Astafyev, V.G. Rasputin, A.Ya. Yashin, B.P. Ekimov, etc. The significance of the sound image in the compositional organization of the work as associated with the traditions of the song culture of Russia has been considered separately. A special attention, based on the concept of B.A. Uspensky, is paid to the problem of points of view in narrative composition, the dialectic of which provides in the Village prose the narrative organization of the composition on the principle of changing points of view: from the highest points of view, coming from Russian cosmism, to the immanent current reality. As a result of this study, the conclusion has been made about the diversity and significant content of compositional forms that perform not a formal, but an essential role in the implementation of the ideological and artistic concepts of writers in the Village prose.

Анализ русской деревенской прозы и ее места в культурном пространстве Китая

In modern Russia it is widely believed that China has adopted all the best from the USSR: the ideas of the equality of citizens, the socialist structure of the state, the fight against corruption, cultural trends, trends in education. The Russian village prose has become part of the school curriculum of China, just as it has done in its homeland in Russia. Rustic prose is close in spirit to the bulk of the population of the Chinese provinces. The ideas and trends that concern the Russian people could not leave the citizens of China indifferent. Russian literature has been influencing the national literature of China since 1917; using the example of the works of Russian literature, the people of China realized the need for change, writers understood the basics of creating new, modern literature. In the 90s, the place of the Russian village prose was so great that the Chinese population perceived it as their native literature. In China, the works of V. Astafyev, V. Rasputin, V. Shukshin are appreciated, the peculiarities of the writers’ styles are studied. The works written in the genre of rustic prose are of great importance for Chinese citizens, they fall out of the usual genre, preserve the historical memory of the people, show the tragedies of the times of collectivization, the hardships of wartime logistics, the restoration of the destroyed state, and others.Village life fascinates with its simplicity. Breaking away from his roots, destroying intra-family ties, being carried away by opposing tendencies and ideas, the hero of the works of Russian authors makes himself unhappy, but the understanding of the mistake comes to him late, alongside the remorse, or does not come at all.

Valentin Rasputin аnd Uzbek Literature: Reassembling Village Prose as Nation Building

Valentin Rasputin аnd Uzbek Literature: Reassembling Village Prose as Nation Building

Лексема «листвень»: от фитонима к концепту

The article is devoted to the study of the semantic properties of the dialect word listven’ (“larch”) in the narrative prose. Based on the material of encyclopaedias, fiction and travel prose, observations on the lexical and semantic properties of the word “larch” (lat. Larix dahurica; in the studied context – larix sibirica) are presented. It is shown how, being a dialect nomination, the word becomes a part of the individual author’s system. In the treatise of Vitruvius, the word Larix is associated with the name of the citadel Larignum. The historian talks about the fire that started during the storming of the fortress and mentions the amazing durability of the tree. The idea of Larix as being of the same root as the Latin laridum is widespread, which gives the tree a metaphorical resemblance to body. As M. Statley notes, in European shamanism the world tree was often depicted as a larch. It is significant that all these options are equally reflected in the modern village prose, in particular, in the work of V. Rasputin “Farewell to Matera” (1976). The purpose of the article is to trace the stages that a given lexeme goes through on the way from a phytonym to a concept. In particular, the word begins to appear in non-fiction texts related to the development of Siberia and the Far East from the end of the 18th century, for example the Russian travel logs and subsequently reports. In almost all of the considered contexts, a characteristic enumerative intonation is used, while the word is included in the same row as the normative phytonyms. In some contexts, the properties of the tree are recorded, which can be considered proto-metaphors: the extraordinary strength of the wood, the ugliness of the tree itself, and, finally, frequent comparisons of the bark of larch with human skin or paper are noted. These remarks are given in passing and are not developed into a narrative. Ethnographers were not very interested in the picture of the world of the indigenous people, so the rich folklore, pagan idea of larch as the center of hulde. That’s correlated with the spirit or personality of a person in the religion of the Druids, remained out of sight. The considered path of the word demonstrates the specific mechanism of the transition of a marked dialect word into non-fiction writing and narrative reflection on the essence of the word in fiction writing. Referring to the local dialect, D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak and V. G. Korolenko gave to the word the necessary imagery and expressiveness, which became a constructive part of the language of rural prose of the second half of the 20th century, that is to say the new travel prose of the 21st century. Of course, with the development of Siberian literature, these ideas reached their positions in the prose of L. M. Leonova, V. N. Rasputin, E. Aypin and many others. “Farewell to Matera” becomes a precedent text, where larch as a world tree is not only transformed into a dialectal “larch”, but also acquires a different morphological and semantic genus (Nf + sing → Nm + sing). In modern literature, the word turns into a topos, or rather a narrative element that is variable, repeated and recognizable by the reader. In this regard, of course, the question arises of translations of the word “larch” into other languages. Of course, bringing this lexeme to its exact literary equivalent, “larch” significantly impoverishes the style, discourse and plot possibilities contained in the lexeme under consideration.

On the specifics of a contemporary film interpretation of village prose: Brothers and Sisters by F.А.Abramov — Two Winters and Three Summers by T.R.Esadze

The author focuses on the recent film adaptation of the iconic work of village prose — the novel tetralogy Brothers and Sisters by Fyodor Abramov. Teimuraz Esadze’s TV series Two Winters and Three Summers (2014), which was shown on Russia 1, is considered as a part of a large-scale process that sociologist Boris Dubin has called reconciliation with the Soviet past (an important symptom of this process was a wave of film adaptations of Soviet classics in the second half of the 2000–2010s). Insisting that Abramov’s novels are classics of Russian litera ture, Esadze sought to extract from them, first, relevant formulas of collective identity, and second, explanatory models capable of shedding light on social processes in late- and post Soviet society. In the article, the way the director uses the conceptual apparatus and imagina tive and rhetorical system of village prose is interpreted as an attempt to reanimate the critical discourse of late-Soviet neopochvennichestvo in new conditions. The article examines the am bivalent strategy of Esadze’s TV series, on the one hand, oriented toward a precise reproduc tion of Abramov’s text, and on the other hand, taking into account the narrative and figurative logic of the TV series, usually addressed to a mass audience. The article concludes that such a strategy has a low analytical and reflexive potential, depending on the generalized media image of a Russian village, internalized through literary, film- and television representations, collective (family) or personal memories.

KeesBoterbloemLife in Stalin's Soviet Union. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. 247 pp. £20.69 (pbk), £63 (hbk).

KeesBoterbloemLife in Stalin's Soviet Union. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. 247 pp. £20.69 (pbk), £63 (hbk).

THE PROBLEM OF ALIENATION OF PEASANTS FROM THE LAND IN THE PERIOD FROM THE MID-1960s TO THE MID-1980s THROUGH THE PRISM OF “VILLAGE PROSE” WRITERS’ JOURNALISTIC WORKS

The article is devoted to the study of the problem of alienation of peasants from the land in the period from the mid-1960s to mid-1980s in the context of the agrarian policy carried out during these years. The analysis of the complex nature of this problem is given on the basis of the extensive material of journalistic works by “village prose” writers, on the basis of archival and other historical sources. The author identifies and studies reasons for the alienation of the peasantry from the land in those years, such as: further stateization, centralization and concentration of agricultural production; its centralized planning; introduction of guaranteed wages; negative impact from the media and popular culture; rural inferiority complex; lack of brides in the countryside; the policy of eliminating unpromising villages.

Книга как жанр: средневековая традиция в русской прозе ХХ века (В.П. Астафьев, Ф.А. Абрамов)

The author aims to observe the phenomenon of “thinking by books” which has been born in the verbal creativity of Medieval Russia and promoted in Russian literature of the XX century but has been little studied yet. A special attention is paid to the formation of the book genre by such writers as V.P. Astafyev (“The Last Bow”, “The King-Fish”, “Zatesi”) and F.A. Abramov (“The Pure Book”). To fulfill the tasks set, the author relies on both the provisions of medieval studies and the concepts of genre theorists and historians of modern Russian literature. Definition of “book” as a specific meta-genre; dialectics of the novel and book genres is considered. A special attention is paid to the processes of formation of the “book” by uniting text elements into a super-genre unity. The author shows how the free form of the “book”, consisting of chapters and stories, provides creative freedom to the author and allows, in the medieval spirit, to expand the original version adding new and new texts to it. The article substantiates the position of the “book” as a narrative consisting of seemingly separate, but cyclically connected chapters and parts. This is a meta-genre that is becoming and moving along with historical reality. In conclusion the author of the article draws a conclusion about the productivity of genre of the book in the Village prose as a leading literary direction of the second half of the twentieth century and marks a continuation of this tradition in contemporary Russian prose.

A ‘small homeland’ in the world context. On Vasily Belov’s early stories

Vasily Belov (1932–2012), from his early works appreciated as one of the most gifted among the ‘village prose’ writers, expects to be read today in a changing literary and cultural context. In the Soviet period he was officially criticised for his partiality to the ‘small homeland’ presumably opposed by him to historical progress and innovation, and, on the other hand, blamed for conservatism and xenophobia in his perpetual chase for those whom he found guilty for the decline of the harmony in a countryside Russia. The issues Belov would take in his time and context are not forgotten today but in their present-day actuality look even more urgent and dramatic. ‘The country and the city’ — a recurring problem of historical evolution (R. Williams) stands up in its new significance with a view to what is seen now as a global world fraught with either a new threat or a promising perspective to national cultures.

Is Dostoevsky immortal?

The article sets out to trace F. Dostoevsky's presence in Russian literature over a broader period: from the 1960s until the present time. According to Amusin, his article especially focuses on the more empirically evident forms of such presence, namely film adaptations of Dostoevsky's works, critical reviews devoted to the writer, and, lastly, the dialogue between Dostoevsky and Russian writers of the late 20th — early 21st cc. Amusin argues that Dostoevsky's ‘background' influence (mostly of the philosophical or religious variety) was most perceived in the Russian village prose movement, whereas the ‘urban prose' writers, notably A. Bitov, Y. Trifonov, and V. Makanin, moved beyond that ‘background' to interact with Dostoevsky on the level of specific matches and parallels in the text. In the end, the critic finds that Dostoevsky is a constant presence in literature: the idiosyncratic aesthetic ideas and a high degree of spirituality that define his oeuvre give it enough power to penetrate time, stimulate our sensibility and occasionally administer a curative ‘acupuncture' treatment.

Shraer [Shrayer] , Maksim D. Antisemitizm i upadok russkoi derevenskoi prozy. Astaf'ev, Belov, Rasputin (review)

SEER, 99, 2, APRIL 2021 346 exhibited themes of militarization in books of the 1930s and ’40s. In the 1950s and ’60s, after the death of Stalin, when there was a return to the ideals of Lenin, themes such as moral choices and allegiance to the Party were recurring in the books. Soviet translations of British books strengthened ideas of any-religious themes, class struggle, war and the fight for independence, as these were ideas that were also very important for Soviet identity. In this unique book, the author makes the original argument that Russian translations cast a Soviet ideological shadow over English stories by emphasizing inequality, the hardship of the English working class and its movement, as standing in opposition to its imperialist past. Sewanee the University of the South Susanna Weygandt Shraer [Shrayer], Maksim D. Antisemitizm i upadok russkoi derevenskoi prozy. Astaf´ev, Belov, Rasputin. Contemporary Western Rusistika. Academic Studies Press and BiblioRossiia, Boston, MA and St Petersburg, 2020. 112 pp. Notes. Bibliography. $30.00. Village prose was the most significant literary movement in the Soviet Union during the early 1960s to mid-1970s, characterized by a nostalgic memory of a rural childhood, and of a world as yet untouched by modernity and even ideology. Its main practitioners — Astaf´ev, Belov and Rasputin who are the subjects of this monograph, but also Vasilii Shukshin, Fedor Abramov, and Boris Mozhaev — are all united in being born in the 1920s and 1930s, and spending their early years in a rural community before moving on to adult life in a local urban centre (in Shukshin’s case several). Collectively their writings form a corpus that recreates an idyll of rural life before industrialization, is reminiscentofnineteenth-centurybucoliccanvasesasevokedbyIvanTurgenev and Gleb Uspenskii, and rejects urban ways as alien to the ‘real’ Russia of the village. Village prose began to decline from the mid-1970s with the death of Shukshin (in 1974) and Abramov (in 1983), and the surviving above-mentioned authors turning away from the pastoral and towards a diatribe against what destroyed it. Maxim Shrayer’s formulaic solution is straightforward and simplistic: Astaf´ev, Rasputin and Belov hated Jews in Russian society. His evidence based on their fictional writings is scanty, and only with reference to Vasilii Belov is there sufficient meat to cover the bare bones. The book is structured around three major chapters, one for each writer, framed by a perfunctory introduction and a final chapter ‘instead of a conclusion’. Belov and Astaf´ev are afforded almost forty pages each, while Valentin Rasputin, ‘the environmental anti- REVIEWS 347 Semite’, seems added on as an afterthought with a mere thirteen, and even then the author admits in his summing up that ‘anti-Semitism mainly manifested itself in the writer’s non-fiction (v publisistike) and not in his fiction’ (p. 88). More could have been said of Rasputin’s xenophobia, as expressed in his prose fiction published in the last years of his life, especially his vitriolic attacks on the peoples of the Caucasus, but of this there is nothing. This is a shame, as Rasputin’s negative attitude to non-Russians and his nationalistic flag-waving are indeed reasons for his fall from grace among Russian intellectuals. Therein lies the rub. The chapter on the writings of Viktor Astaf´ev (‘the internal anti-Semite’) essentially discusses just one work of fiction, the novel Tsar´-ryba (first published in 1976, not 1977, as here), although there is admittedly some insightful exploration of its Biblical motifs. Otherwise the chapter focuses on Astaf´ev’s well-documented correspondence with Natan Eidel´man, and less so with Iurii Nagibin, Of Astaf´ev’s ‘war prose’, for which he has been duly recognized in the post-Soviet period, the author merely comments that ‘there are no Jewish bones and Jewish corpses in what Astaf’ev relates about the war’ (p. 40). It is unclear to this reviewer how this statement, however true it may be, is of relevance to a study of village prose, and indeed any rationale for its ‘decline’. The main problem with this study is that it does not engage with its own stated purpose, and only scratches the surface of its subject...

ОБРАЗЫ РУССКОГО ДОМА И МОТИВ БЕЗДОМНОСТИ В ЛИТЕРАТУРЕ ХХ-ХХI ВЕКОВ

The article is devoted to the image of home as it was formed in the XX century Russian literature and as it continues to develop in modern literature. It is associated with the tragic motif of loss, which dates back to A. P. Chekhov's comedy “The Cherry Orchard”. This motif was developed by M. Bulgakov, albeit on entirely different material, in the novella “Heart of a Dog” and in the novel “The Master and Margarita”.The article examines different interpretations of the image of home: it is the city house in the poetry of the war years ( K. Simonov' work), in the Russian emigration literature (V. Nabokov, N. Osorgin), in the artistic world of writers of the new peasant movement (P. Vasiliev), in the literature of socialist realism (S. Babaevsky), in the village prose of the second half of the XX century (V. Rasputin), as well as in modern literature (R. Senchin). The image of home in the 20th-century Russian literature acquires two aspects: on the one hand, it is not seen as an urban multi-story building or a wooden village house, but as a civilizational phenomenon; on the other hand, the writers reflect on the tragic loss of this home and consider the situation as one of homelessness and restlessness, which is clearly indicated by the literary pseudonym of one of the most complex and tragic characters in the novel “The Master and Margarita” by M. Bulgakov: Ivan Bezdomny (Homeless). The tragic perception of the loss of home reaches its climax in V. Rasputin's story “Farewell to Matyora”, where this theme takes on a mythological character: the loss of the Russian home is equated with the end of Atlantis. But if Atlantis perished as a result of a natural disaster insurmountable for man, then the death of Matera at the bottom of the man-made sea acquires an even more tragic meaning.