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Abstract: This study analyzes the mechanisms of deconstruction of the Soviet aviation discourse in postmodern prose, directly debating with the canon of socialist realism. Aviation discourse as such is an important part of the socialist realist worldview; the aviator is one of the key characters of the era, located at the top of the social hierarchy represented in the texts of the corresponding period. The aim of the work is to analyze the functional content of aviation images and the mechanisms of their re-coding in the prose of postmodernism (based on the texts by D. A. Prigov “The Creature is not under jurisdiction”, “Live in Moscow”). The methodology of this research involves the use of the methods of mythopoetic, structural-typological, and discursive analyses. The results of this work are expressed in the following conclusions: the theme of aviation in the texts of Prigov is closely related to the plot of growing up. Given the specificity of the direction, it is appropriate to talk about the deindividualized experience of living through Soviet childhood and Soviet youth, the common background of which was a combination of various components of authoritarian discourse, including aviation discourse. The re-coding of specific images and plots in this situation is the result of a “struggle” for power over the word and the appropriation of the “symbolic capital” of socialist realism. Thus, the elements of the Socialist realism canon functioning in the texts of Prigov undergo a radical transformation. The image of an aviator, who possesses within socialist realism the features of a positive character, vitality, mediation potential, as well as the function of protecting the Motherland, loses its significant characteristics. The pilot’s vitality is subjected to travestification through actualization of taboo topics and motifs. The traditional early Soviet literature opposition of the “aviator – little man” being destroyed: the philistine surpasses the superman, symbolically overthrows him by having sexual intercourse with his wife. The pathos of protection and creation is replaced by the pathos of violence and destruction. Thus, it can be concluded that the deconstruction of the Soviet aviation discourse is carried out in a complex manner, primarily through re-coding the aviator’s image.

About the author(s) :

Tatyana A. Zagidulina

Krasnoyarsk State Pedagogical University named after V. P. Astafyev (Krasnoyarsk, Russia)

Russian Christian Academy for Humanities named after Fyodor Dostoevsky (Saint Petersburg, Russia)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1747-0837

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 15.03.2025; date of publication: 30.06.2025

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