Russian Literary Estate: A Look Into the Future

The purpose of the article is to identify and characterize promising vectors of development of the Russian literary estate in the first quarter of the 21st century, in connection with which the works on the “estate” theme of T. N. Tolstaya, Yu. V. Mamleev, V. G. Sorokin, A. P. Potemkin, E. G. Vodolazkin, G. Sh. Yakhina, A. I. Slapovsky, M. L. Stepnova, V. O. Pelevin, etc. are examined in a wide cultural context. The article demonstrates that the new quality of the estate text, in comparison with the classics of the 19th — early 20th century, arises in Soviet literature and continues in the post-Soviet times. The main categories for the development of a modern literary estate are estate heterotopia, estate habitus, dacha myth, crypto-estate mythology and estateness, as well as new modifications of the estate topos: garden-city, a window into transcendent meanings and the Euro-Asian phenomenon. However, the most significant factor in the future of the literary estate in the 21st century is the “civilizational approach,” drawn from historical science. The interdisciplinary phenomenon of the Russian estate is understood within its framework, on the one hand, as one of the manifestations of the universal archetype of world history since the Biblical times, on the other — as an important element of Russia’s national cultural code from antiquity to the present day. It is the “civilizational approach” that connects the futurology of the Russian estate with the “great historical time” and takes its history beyond the imperial period of the 18th — early 20th century, which previously delineated its existence. Thanks to him, the signs of Moscow Russia of the 16th–17th centuries in a number of “estate” texts by modern authors can be perceived as a trend, rather than a curiosity. The relevance of the article lies in the desire to elaborate the paths of Russia’s civilizational identity. Its scientific novelty is in the first comprehensively presented system of categories of poetics for the study of the literary estate of the present and future. The conclusions of the article are obtained with regard to the research context on the issues raised and call for further discussion.