Cultural self-identification of post-revolutionary emigration on the example of V.V. Nabokov's works

The aim of the article is to find out the characteristics of Nabokov's cultural identity, to determine whether he has the values of perception that representatives of the emigrant thought had. The source of the material for the article is the Russian-language prose and literary studies of the writer of the early period of his creative work. The article presents an analysis of this source in the historical and cultural context. It was indicated that the theme of spiritual loneliness finds an echo in Nabokov's prose. It shows itself in the letter of an emigrant hero to a girl, whose image echoes the image of love for Russia ("A Letter That Never Reached Russia"), a description of the Russian emigrant environment in Berlin ("Mary"), the nostalgia of the protagonist for the lost homeland in the story "The Visit to the Museum". The initial period of Nabokov's formation as a poet demonstrates the direct dependence of his poetics on external biographical influences - his get-away from Petrograd and evacuation from Crimea caused a sense of exile. Special attention was paid to the problem of reflecting the realities of time in Nabokov's works. It is noted that Nabokov's works are not ideological from the socio-political point of view. The writer was an ardent opponent of ideology in art, he was a formalist aesthete. But this does not mean that there was no reflection of the existing reality in his works. In particular, the dystopian novel Invitation to a Beheading is full of allusions to the contemporary reality; it represents the writer's reaction to the contemporary events. This is a cruel and debunking response to the events of totalitarian politics. The novel also contains a metaphysical basis: empathy and culture are placed above the collectivism spirit and state needs. The central character is prone to reflection and self-knowledge. His soul and consciousness are inaccessible to punitive bodies. Another type of Nabokov's character is a philistine and a vulgar, feeling thirst for merging with an organized majority. It is not enough just to feel like part of something whole; a common cause should unite people. It can be a war, a struggle with an external or internal enemy, which is represented in the story "Cloud, Castle, Lake". The article gives historical examples of the implementation of this concept into practice. Thus, the theme of nostalgia, multilaterally represented in Nabokov's work, occupies one of the leading places in understanding the problem of a "superfluous man" who avoids assimilation with a new culture (through the example of the emigrant expat in the European society). There is a trace of the desire to preserve cultural identity in the writer's works, as well as a deep analysis of the realities of life. In this regard, V.V. Nabokov's works contain certain features of the culture of the Russian emigre community of the after-0ctober period.

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