Przegląd Rusycystyczny 2022 nr 4 cały numer

Strona redakcyjna

spis treści

Przedmowa

The goal of this article is to establish how the events of 1991, which are commonly associated with the fall of the USSR, are depicted in Russian prose. Most of the writers, including E. Vodolazkin, V. Pelevin,  P. Sanayev, S. Lebedev, A. Prokhanov portray in their works the moment of the August Coup, even though it often plays only a marginal role in the story. Therefore, the author analyzes selected fragments isolated from the entirety of the respectful works, and examines them outside their original contexts, paying attention to motifs, images, and notions they contain. 

THE ARCHIVAL VECTOR IN MODERN RUSSIAN LITERATURE

The author’s intention is to study the “archival” vector of modern Russian literature. When the state archives were opened in the 1990s, it became a shock for those citizens who tried to comprehend the recent history of the USSR. Insight into these materials initiated a new vector in literature – “archival”. The article examines two contemporary Russian texts: Sasha Filipenko's novel The Red Cross and Sukhbat Aflatuni's novel The Earthly Paradise. All the plot twists in these texts are not the author's invention, but the paradigm of the political investigatory records of 1937–1938: interrogation protocols, indictments, relatives’ statements, various kinds of certificates. The narrator fills in the gaps that are missing in documents: builds links between the interrogation protocols, restores the psychological context, the relationship between the accused and the investigator, – and the picture of the past becomes complete and convincing.

Keywords: archival documents, modern Russian literature, Stalinist repressions, the novel of Sukhbat Aflatuni Paradise earthly, the novel of Sasha Filipenko Red Cross.

The paper focuses on how modern playwrights portray the reality of the Soviet past which does not exist any longer. The choice of different approaches is not solely determined by the generation gap; it also depends on the practical purpose that a play is to fulfill on stage. For example, Nikolai Kolyada’s Time Capsule is nostalgic and sentimental in order to appeal to the viewers that long for the long-passed time when they were young. Yulia Tupikina had a specific task to write a play about building the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station ordered by the Bratsk Drama Theater, while Yaroslava Pulinovich’ Endless April focuses on the historical repeating trauma. What do these different texts and authors have in common?

The article is devoted to the comparison of novels about generals written in different periods of post-Soviet history: The General and his Army by Georgii Vladimov and The General and his Family by Timur Kibirov. The satirical tendency of depicting the general in Russian literature, the traditions of "lieutenant prose", the popularity of the family novel genre in modern literature form the background for comparing novels. The author examines the genre, compositional and narrative techniques that writers use to comprehend the Soviet past; highlights the motive of the meeting of the general with the philologist. The comparison reveals the changes in attitudes towards the Soviet that have taken place in society over the 30 post-Soviet years, and reveals that the exposure of Soviet ideology develops from emphasizing the tragic in history to its deheroization. The use of psychologism techniques shows how writers share in their heroes the universally human, personal and historical. Thus, writers not only comprehend the past, but also react to their contemporary attitude towards it.

Key words: modern Russian literature, Soviet past, image of a general, Georgii Vladimov, Timur Kibirov

In the context of sharp ideological polarization of the cultural life of Russia, Evgeny Vodolazkin’s oeuvre is a special case. In a number of his works, without entering into public discussions, Vodolazkin has consistently proved the immorality and futility of the methods of organizing society according to the Soviet model. In the collection Part of the Land Surrounded by the Sky. Solovetsky Texts and Images (2011), edited by Vodolazkin, the emotional rejection of the Soviet paradigm is vividly embodied. The fantastic plot of the novel The Aviator (2016) allows us to draw a conclusion about the degradation of society by comparing the pre-Revolutionary, the Soviet and the post-Soviet stages of the protagonist’s life. The novel Justification of the Island (2020) can be considered as the final part of the understanding of the Soviet period in the history of Russia. The failure of the Soviet paradigm is demonstrated through a special artistic system, which is based on reduction and caricaturing that make it possible to see the bloody absurdity and the absolute moral decline.

Keywords: Evgeny Vodolazkin, soviet paradigm, ideological polarization, time, person.

The article examines the novel Echelon to Samarkand by Guzel Yakhina, dedicated to the Soviet past and the theme of «great hunger» of the early 1920s, which is interpreted as a collective trauma; analyzes the chronotope of the way, semantics of nomination of chapters structuring the development of the plot, architectonics of the novel; reveals the mindset to create a text that includes elements of myth, fairy tale, parable, which promotes author’s personal mythology and determined the meta-genre specifics of the novel-travelogue. The analysis of the text shows that Yakhina's novel expression demonstrates a personal perception of the historical background of the disappeared country, «new historicism» in the understanding of the Soviet civilization.

This article is devoted to the analysis of Sergei Lebedev's novel The People of August (2016) in the context of postmemory. The work is focused on the writer's third attempt to comprehend the past, this time in the context of the landmark events of 1991 for Russia – a kind of border situation that turns into an impulse to fight for the future. But, unfortunately, as Lebedev shows, regardless of political circumstances, history repeats itself all the time. Hence, the traumatic imperative of searching for the "forgotten" dead becomes the main "storyline" of next generations. The policy of the current, once again uncontested authorities, which prefers a utilitarian rather than ceremonial attitude to the dead and supports "Sovietism", condemns Russia to, paradoxical being-non-being, endless traumatic remaining in the "mute" memory without the possibility of regaining its own identity.

The novel Oblivion (2010) by Sergei Lebedev (born in 1981) - the subject of our analysis - is one of the first literary examples of a new trend in a Russian memorial discourse, so far focused solely on commemorating the victims of the Stalinist regime and ignoring the figures of executioners in a complete silence. By breaking the social and cultural taboos, the writer creates a hero - a former torturer of the regime whose criminal nature is revealed through the practices of a bodily memory. The purpose of this article is to semantically analyse  the executioner's body language (i.e., gestures, facial expressions, eyesight,silence). Lebedev's concentration on bodily and physiological aspects makes it possible to unmask a carefully hidden biography of the torturer.

DACHA AS A METAPHOR OF SOVIET LIFE: "HABITUS OF DACHA" IN ELENA CHIZHOVA'S NOVEL THE MUSHROOM PLANET

The article deals with the "habitus of dacha" in Elena Chizhova's novel The Mushroom Planet. Its bearers are characters whose personality was formed at a certain time under the influence of culture and actions associated with the Soviet dacha. "Habitus of dacha" in the work refers to two different historical periods: Soviet and post-Soviet. Its versions are used by Chizhova to reflect the most important problems and transformations in modern Russia. The image of the Soviet dacha, being a metaphor for life in the USSR, is gloomy and pessimistic, which is not typical of memories of childhood and youth. The post-Soviet dacha is a phenomenon that represents the economic and social processes of the transition to capitalism and the rejection of the legacy of socialism. An analysis of the novel The Mushroom Planet leads to the conclusion, that Chizhova's characters represent different ways of adapting to new economic and social conditions. The author gives her forecast for the future, leaving alive the character who is unable to get out of the "Sovietness".

The subject of interest in this article is the problem of narcissism in literary terms. The reflection of Simon Baron-Cohen serves as the theoretical basis. In the protagonist of the short story The Wife - Pavel Andreitch Asorin - many narcissistic features can be distinguished, which translates into the world of the story, the relations between the characters (primarily the relationship with his wife, Natalya), and the narrative structure (first-person narrative). Chekhov shows the protagonist's reevaluation of values, but the changes in the perception of life only allow Asorin to withdraw into the background. The lack of empathy cannot be easily filled, which ultimately results in the lack of a full happy ending in the short story.

The author asks which way contemporary Russians’ consciousness is depicted in new Russian literature. He shows a few important novels published in the last decades and the role of neorealistic literature (Roman Senchin, Andrey Dmitriyev, Petr Aleshkovsky) and books written by women writers (Ludmila Petrushevskaya, Elena Chizhova, Guzel Yakhina) in deconstructing of neo-imperial and The Big Russia myth.

The aim of this article is to assess the attitude of the contemporary Russian writer Viktor Pelevin towards readers and literary world in the context of the theses put forward by Johan Huizinga in his book Homo ludens. As the Dutch researcher points out in his paper, „Play is a culture's attribute, which precedes, accompanies, and penetrates it from the very beginning”. Pelevin, on the other hand, by concealing himself from readers and meticulously separating his personal and professional life, engages - in my opinion - in a peculiar game with his readers and critics, which I described by the expression used in the title: „scriptor ludens”.

“Vagina will destroy this state.” Practices of resistance in the activities of the Russian feminist-poetry collective F-Letter

The article deals with the activities and work of the Russian feminist-poetry collective F-Letter (2017−2021). It analyses both the institutional dimension — that is, the milieu location of the phenomenon within the contemporary Russian literary field — and the ideological dimension — in which the most important goal of the feminist poets was to create an emancipated active lyrical-political subject. The theoretical perspective that constitutes the basis of reflection in the article grows out of the inspiration of Rita Felski’s research manifesto Uses of Literature and Jacques Ranciere’s perspective on the politics of literature.

Heterogeneous narratives of modern protest discourse in Belarus are reviewed using the methodology of discourse, pragmatic and intersemiotic analysis. The author analyzes recognizable signs of the Belarusian resistance, describes the functional and pragmatic aspect of using the visual component in protest texts, and points out the contextual conditioning of text formation. The operationalization of the protest culture and the generated forms of communication as a complex phenomenon emphasizes the tendency towards semiotic complexity in the study of discursive activity (social construction of meanings).

The text presents the issue of  evaluating and updating ethnic stereotypes about Russia and Russians (ruski, ruscy, ruskie) implemented in internet communication using folksonomy (social categorization of content). The research area is the Polish website wykop.pl, the materials of which have been used for the contextual analysis of contemporary implementations of linguistic ethnic stereotypes manifested by objects such as tags. The operator #rosja  (#russia), together with the excerpted tags, creates collocations, opening the way to renegotiating the image of stereotypes Russia and the Russian. The last part of the article presents linguistic implementations of ethnic stereotypes Russia and the Russian in tags used for discrediting and polarization in public unofficial social discourse.

The aim of the article is to analyze Polish and Russian speech acts of invitation sent on postcards in the second half of the 20th century. Although invitations have been the subject of considerable linguistic interest so far, speech acts of invitation observed in postcard messages per se have not been studied yet. The study concerns the location of speech acts of invitation in the structure of postcard messages, their formal and pragmatic features, as well as their pre- and postpositional context. The analysis proves that speech acts of invitation usually serve as an additional element of the Polish messages, while the Russian invitations occupy more central positions. It has also been shown that direct speech acts of invitation are rarely found in both languages. In contrast, indirect speech acts of invitation are utilized more frequently and they commonly take on the form of sentences with imperative verb forms.

Д.С. Мережковский, Собрание сочинений: В 20 т. Т. 10: Л. Толстой и Достоевский: исследование

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Przegląd Rusycystyczny 2022 nr 4 noty