Reflection on the Soviet in V. Astafyevs and S. Zalygins social and politicalessays of 1990s

Understanding of the Soviet past in the publicism (essays, articles) of V. Astafyev and S. Zalygin,whose personal formation took place in the Soviet era, is determined, first, by the objective complexityof the Soviet reality, second, by the knowledge about the Soviet that had been formed by the last decadeof the 20th century. The writers show the ambivalent attitude to the Soviet both at the intellectual(interpretations and estimations) and at the emotional (feelings, personal experience) levels. The dualityof the Soviet past perception, the discrepancy of its intention (negative and positive trends) does notsuppose a single polarity: either the idealization of the Soviet past, or its full denial, devaluation. V.Astafyev and S. Zalygin form a heterogeneous image of the Soviet past which reflects its real nature.Their works express the rational understanding, the comprehensive interpretation of the past epoch inall its spheres (ideology, statehood, social relations, morals and culture, daily existence etc.).In V. Astafyev's perception, the Soviet utopian ideology realised in a global historical experimentmythologizes the reality replacing it by fictitious constructs. Simulation has a total character in theSoviet era, when ideological signs are extrapolated on all spheres of social life; ideology pretends to bean only and self-sufficient reality and becomes a kind of "hyperreality" (D.Lyon) the person is absorbedin.In S. Zalygin's opinion, the Soviet project, which was of no historical necessity, was a success dueto the concurrence of the ideology with the Russian-based national psychology. The communist ideologistsused the utopianism of the national character determined by peculiar national geographicallandscapes. They also deliberately liberated the destructive inclinations in the Russian society.V. Astafyev and S. Zalygin have these ideas about all the aspects of the Soviet system (economy,politics, social system, official culture, etc.), determining the negative trend of the Soviet system estimationsas a whole - it is ideology that makes an a priori basis for all Soviet practices and determinesits voluntaristic implication.In their writings V. Astafyev and S. Zalygin give another type of estimation of the Soviet as everydaylife, as a living space of the individual, a sphere of private existence, as something experiencedpersonally. They understand everyday life as a sphere of real human existence, an ethical space betweencommon people where people's personalities develop. In this aspect V. Astafyev and S. Zalyginunderstand the Soviet epoch as the time they were destined to live and accept it objectively and historically.Thus, there are alternative sides of the reality opposite to the official spheres S. Zalygin's andV.Astafyev's reflections on the Soviet. One can say that V. Astafyev's and S. Zalygin's essays fix themechanism of "deterritorialization", escape from the system (A. Yurchak). The authoritative discourserepresenting a strict dogma gradually loses its constructive meaning, its conformity with the socialreality, reduces itself to a discursive simular transforming the Soviet life into the space of postmodernism.There being no other different description of the reality, individuals form their own alternativediscourses in the spheres of informal, "non-authoritative" life (private life, literature and the arts) -they "escape" the "authoritative" discourse, and constructive meanings are deterritorialized.Summing up, in V. Astafyev's and S. Zalygin's works the Soviet as a concept does not become anidentification model, and the fragments of the Soviet reality do not play the role of ideological andcultural indexes in the identification processes. S. Zalygin and V. Astafyev realize the personality typeof consciousness, preserve the internal integrity, and prove to be more adaptable to the changes ofsocial conditions. For this reason, supporting the continuity of the internal existence and the feeling ofself-identity, they experience nostalgia not for the system, but for the epoch in its existential value.

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