The genre “a letter to a leader” in the literary heritage of V. M. Shukshin

The paper considers the works of V. М. Shukshin, the famous Russian writer and film director. The author analyses the epistolary texts in the genre of “a letter to a leader” as well as the stories involving the elements of this genre on the formal, content or intertextual levels. In the prose of V. M. Shukshin, the letter to the party leader (or another major administrative worker) bears mostly negative connotations, as in the literary script “Planting season” (“Posevnaya kampaniya”) (1960), short stories “Lyolya Seleznova from the Faculty of journalism” (“Lyolya Selezn’ova s fakul’teta zhurnalistiki”) (1962) or “The man Deryabin” (“Muzhik Deryabin”) (1974). The main appeal of the author of the letters to the representatives of state power here is the appeal to repressive force. Nevertheless, considering the level of the author’s worldview and the artistic world of the works in the aspect of the creative evolution of Shukshin, “a letter to a leader” is the starting point on the path to the new genre of the Shukshin’s story. Desperate to seek the Truth from the “leaders,” V. M. Shukshin eventually created a new genre at the interface of the document and artistic prose - a documentary story, a vivid example of which is “Slander” (“Kl’auza”) (1974), one of the last Shukshin’s short stories. However, the documentary story is focused on a different addressee than a “letter to a leader” - on the people.

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