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Abstract: The article deals with the image of history in Aleksey Ivanov’s novel “Pischeblok”. The work of literature is explored in the context of the writer’s self-development. The observations of the author’s understanding of history are supplemented by various contextual connections of the novel with Ivanov’s creative activity and Russian prose of the last decades (Y. Mamleyev, V. Mikushevich). The article pays special attention to the image of the world of “Pischeblok”: it is argued that the depiction of the late Soviet era is subordinated to the exposure of already outmoded rituals of human behavior and life. The chronotope of the pioneer camp, embodying a “cast of the epoch”, allowed the writer to see the relationship between children and counselors as a game of history (from pre-revolutionary Russia to the last decades of the Soviet power). This metaphorical principle of world-modeling is inscribed in the context of Ivanov’s creative activity in general. An attempt is made to explain the writer’s interest in the theme of vampires. It is argued that Ivanov is driven not only and not so much by following the fashion and tastes of mass readers as by the idea of the state as a “pischeblok” (catering unit). The author tries to warn the reader about the danger of ideological monopoly, showing its ability to generate a society of vampires and ghouls unable to think. It is the vampires in the world of the “Pischeblok” that make the shift of History and its ideas into a fake game inevitable. The liberation from the artificial world and the imposed ideology in “Pischeblok” is solved paradoxically: any attempt of man to change the established order of things turns him into a vampire of the new era. This authorial thought is manifested in the novel by the nature of the depiction of three times: prerevolutionary Russia, Soviet reality, and the perspective of the post-Soviet world. Avoiding ideological and political discussions, Ivanov looks attentively at the image of man thus expressing his hope for the future.

About the author(s) :

Konstantin S. Kogut

Advanced Educational Scientific Center, 

Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin

(Ekaterinburg, Russia)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5402-249X

 

A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s : The research was carried out with financial support of the Russian Science Foundation (project No. 23-28-00905 “Aesthetic meanings and fractal poetics of modern Russian literature: A. P. Platonov, L. M. Leonov, A. V. Ivanov”).

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 27.09.2023; date of publication: 31.10.2023

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