Comprehension of the Child's image in the context of the utopian concept in Russian prose of the 1930s

The article explores the image of the Child, which is traditional for the utopian sphere of concepts, starting from Plato's Republic. The material is Russian Soviet prose of the 1930s (Valentin Kataev's Time, Forward! (1931-1932), Mikhail Prishvin's The Tsar's Road (1933-1947), Leonid Leonov's Road to the Ocean (1935)). The utopian content of the concept "Child/Children" had already been transformed in the 19th century. In the first third of the 20th century, due to the formation of the concept "Acceleration", it acquired a new content: the upbringing of a child and the emerging of a new man are a supertask of the epoch for the acceleration of history and the achievement of communism. A child is the factor of "acceleration" and the main "consumer" of the Happy Future. The Soviet literature of the 1930s depicted the process of education of the younger generation. In the article, the authors analyze three novels, each is different in topics, style, plots and other components of a literary whole, but the writers are united by the depicted type of the Child. There is a type of child, tabula rasa, in the typology of the Child, demanded by utopians - from Plato to modern times. It is organic to the utopian sphere of concepts, Russian and European utopian thought at the turn of the 20th century, and it was actualized in the official ideology in the Soviet period. The writers use all the variety of literary techniques and expressive means to create the image of the Child, the rich potential of modifications of the novel genre. The image of the Child in "industrial prose" is presented as a factor of acceleration on the way to the Communist Future in the context of futuristic ideas of the time. In the novel-chronicle Time, Forward!, the Child is the highest value that determines the Bright Future. Valentin Kataev establishes the connection of the concept "Acceleration" with the concept "Childhood" in the light of the "theory of pace". In The Tsar's Road, the landmark event of the Great Utopia (the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal) is connected with the fate of the boy Zuyk, a coast-dweller. Mikhail Prishvin's tabula rasa child is an archetypal child captured by the pace of the technological revolution of the Soviet state. Leonid Leonov in his Road to the Ocean combines the images created by the Russian Revolution of 1917, the features of the new utopian consciousness with the features of the national character, works with the material familiar to the reader - the life of the province. The image of the heroine of the novel, Liza, is most vividly and psychologically authentically revealed. Narrating about Liza the child, the writer meticulously recreates the image of a family paradise "in the glorious city of Porozhensk in the midst of the war". Leonid Leonov builds a programme of upbringing for the tabula rasa Child. In the present, the characters are engaged in "the final assault to transform the planet". The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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