The Russian revolution of 1917 in the neo-mythological novel of the early 20th and the turn of the 21st cc.: continuity and controversy

Based on D.S. Merezhkovsky's December 14 (1918), M.M. Prishvin's diary of 1918 and a number of articles of the collection Iz glubiny [From the Depth] (1918), on the one hand, and T.N. Tol-staya's Kys (2000), P.V. Krusanov's A Bite of Angel (2000), O.A. Slavnikova's 2017 (2006), on the other, the author of the article considers the changes occurring in the topic of Russian literature from the era of the revolution of 1917 to the turn of the 21st c. The historical-typological and hermeneutic methods, conceptual (constantological) and mythopoetic approaches, the study of the history of creative works are used. It is shown that the historiosophical neomythology of Merezhkovsky in December 14, written tight after the revolutionary events in Russia, was reduced to the necessity of dis-identification of the Russian "land" and the "Beast-people" that betrayed it. Similar thoughts are found in a number of works by his contemporaries. On the background of the 1000-year tradition of identifying the "land" and its people in Russian literature and culture, relying on the Bible, Byzantine literature and folklore, the deconstruction of the concept "Russian people" led to the creation of a neo-myth about the post-human on the former Russian land. Russian postmodernism thought of itself as of a direct continuation of the culture of the Silver Age. The author shows how Merezhkovsky's neo-mythologem about the sparation of "land" and people outlined in December 14 in the genre coordinates of dystopia and alternative history spread on to the Russian art prose of the turn of the 21st c. In the novel Kys there are mutants that appeared on the territory of the former Moscow as a result of a nuclear explosion, usual humanistic norms are inapplicable to them. Tolstaya turns the concept "people" into a simulacrum: neither "old" nor "duckies" are "God-bearers"; they are not even a "cultural-historical community". A potential post-human in the dystopian novel is a mutant Benedict, protesting against the binary opposition of "mouse" and "cat" ("kys"), traditional for the Russian society. A Bite of Angel tells the story of the Empire of "mogs" as a tool of total destruction of the "rotten" world, the result of which should be "Iriy" - a "heaven on earth" without people on the territory of the former Russia. The Sacred Emperor Ivan the Plague, having survived the "bite of angel", became a creature of inhuman nature. To achieve his purpose, he chose, in terms of Merezhkovsky, the path of the "Beast": not love, but fear leading to obedience. The 100-year results of the revolution of 1917 in the novel 2017 testify to the essential "non-authenticity" of this event and of all Russian civilization of the 20th c. Only archaic-mythological archetypes, embodied in nature ("land"), and mythological creatures that nature makes have an onto-logical status; their emanation is certain individuals. So, the author proves the stability of the shift in the literary topic under the pressure of the revolutionary events of 1917-1918; it can be explained not only by the unique history of Russia in the 20th c., but also by the global process of massivization of historical peoples as well as globalization with its gradually weakening link between "lands" and their peoples.

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