Mashkova E. The production prose of the 1920-30s: Socialist realism and the mental basis of the Russian literature.

The thesis examines the mental specificity of Socialist realism on the extensive material of the production novels of L. Leonov, I. Ehrenburg, F. Gladkov, M. Shaginyan, N. Liashko, V. Kataev, A. Malyshkin, Yu. Krymov, B. Jasienсski, V. Ketlinskaya, I. Le, P. Nilin and the works of forgotten and little-known authors. It characterizes the religious component of Socialist realism, clarifies its relation to the Christian value system and emphasizes the sacred nature of the image of the leader and his words in the production prose. The thesis traces the fate of the key concepts and literary types of the 19th century (God-bearing Russian peasant, pilgrim-contemplator, unnecessary person) in the Soviet literature and shows the extinction of the Russian literary tradition in Socialist realism. For the first time in national literary criticism it reveals the meaning of Dostoevsky's creative experience for the self-definition of the Soviet literature. The thesis marks out two mental paradigms in the production prose of the studied period, corresponding to the two first stages of the existence of the Socialist realist canon, and proves the simulation of its norms by some authors.