The work of Fyodor Abramov in the reception of Anglo-American slavists and Russian critics of the end of 20th century

During the period, which came right after the disintegration of Soviet Union, many realities of the Soviet reality were exposedto revision. Freedom, which was marked by perestroika and glasnost in the late 1980s, caused not only change of a literary canon.With the beginning of a new stage in the history of literature the reputation of writers making public success during the Soviet periodbegan to be exposed to doubt. The most important blame of rural prose consisted in the fact that it became the literature that obtainedan official recognition at the time of cruel censorship. In the article Commemoration for the Soviet Literature Victor Yerofeev eventakes out charge to the rural literature in degradation though authors of this prose to his mind are more gifted and more socially worthyin comparison with representatives of the semi-official literature. Nevertheless, many western Slavists have appeared to be unanimous ina positive estimation of the literary heritage of the Russian authors writing in the Soviet period on the theme of village. For example,K. Parthe reminds in the days of stagnation rural literature was respected for truthfulness and honesty, and in the late eightiesV. Rasputin, V. Belov and V. Astafyev began to be considered as conservatives coming back to patriarchal values and traditions. It isparadoxical doubly as their best works had been written more than twenty years ago in the most democratic traditions of the Russian literature.For the American researcher the main role played by rural prose in the post-Stalin revival of literature does not raise any doubt.Despite the seeming compromise with the authorities, rural writers made much, and most importantly they promoted the revival of traditionsof the Russian literature. According to J. Billington creative work of rural writers was a new version of the protest against the Soviet system.These writers glorified the Russian village and province, but also convicted the Soviet bureaucracy, which destroyed their values and pollutedearth and water. One of the writers, whose creativity has been reconsidered by the Russian criticism in the post-Soviet period, is FyodorAbramov. The English critic David Gillespie, appreciating Abramov very highly, declares that the story The Trip to the Past would beenough to remember Abramov hundred years later and that his name has already entered the history of the Russian literature. Some criticsdraw a parallel between him and A. Solzhenitsyn. But, if telling about Solzhenitsyn the majority of western critics started with idealizedperception of his creativity peculiar for all the West in the early eighties, the analysis of Abramovs creative heritage is characterized by thatfact that ideological barriers of perception of the modern Russian literature were already removed.

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