Reflection on the Soviet in V. Astafyevs and S. Zalygins social and political essays of 1990s
Understanding of the Soviet past in the publicism (essays, articles) of V. Astafyev and S. Zalygin, whose personal formation took place in the Soviet era, is determined, first, by the objective complexity of the Soviet reality, second, by the knowledge about the Soviet that had been formed by the last decade of the 20th century. The writers show the ambivalent attitude to the Soviet both at the intellectual (interpretations and estimations) and at the emotional (feelings, personal experience) levels. The duality of the Soviet past perception, the discrepancy of its intention (negative and positive trends) does not suppose a single polarity: either the idealization of the Soviet past, or its full denial, devaluation. V. Astafyev and S. Zalygin form a heterogeneous image of the Soviet past which reflects its real nature. Their works express the rational understanding, the comprehensive interpretation of the past epoch in all its spheres (ideology, statehood, social relations, morals and culture, daily existence etc.). In V. Astafyev's perception, the Soviet utopian ideology realised in a global historical experiment mythologizes the reality replacing it by fictitious constructs. Simulation has a total character in the Soviet era, when ideological signs are extrapolated on all spheres of social life; ideology pretends to be an only and self-sufficient reality and becomes a kind of "hyperreality" (D.Lyon) the person is absorbed in. In S. Zalygin's opinion, the Soviet project, which was of no historical necessity, was a success due to the concurrence of the ideology with the Russian-based national psychology. The communist ideologists used the utopianism of the national character determined by peculiar national geographical landscapes. They also deliberately liberated the destructive inclinations in the Russian society. V. Astafyev and S. Zalygin have these ideas about all the aspects of the Soviet system (economy, politics, social system, official culture, etc.), determining the negative trend of the Soviet system estimations as a whole - it is ideology that makes an a priori basis for all Soviet practices and determines its voluntaristic implication. In their writings V. Astafyev and S. Zalygin give another type of estimation of the Soviet as everyday life, as a living space of the individual, a sphere of private existence, as something experienced personally. They understand everyday life as a sphere of real human existence, an ethical space between common people where people's personalities develop. In this aspect V. Astafyev and S. Zalygin understand the Soviet epoch as the time they were destined to live and accept it objectively and historically. Thus, there are alternative sides of the reality opposite to the official spheres S. Zalygin's and V.Astafyev's reflections on the Soviet. One can say that V. Astafyev's and S. Zalygin's essays fix the mechanism of "deterritorialization", escape from the system (A. Yurchak). The authoritative discourse representing a strict dogma gradually loses its constructive meaning, its conformity with the social reality, reduces itself to a discursive simular transforming the Soviet life into the space of postmodernism. There being no other different description of the reality, individuals form their own alternative discourses in the spheres of informal, "non-authoritative" life (private life, literature and the arts) - they "escape" the "authoritative" discourse, and constructive meanings are deterritorialized. Summing up, in V. Astafyev's and S. Zalygin's works the Soviet as a concept does not become an identification model, and the fragments of the Soviet reality do not play the role of ideological and cultural indexes in the identification processes. S. Zalygin and V. Astafyev realize the personality type of consciousness, preserve the internal integrity, and prove to be more adaptable to the changes of social conditions. For this reason, supporting the continuity of the internal existence