The Russian-speaking writer in the socio-cultural collisions of the XX-XXI centuries: literary diasporality as a cultural trend

Abstract

The article deals with the transformation of the status and priorities of Russian-speaking writers who find themselves in a diaspora. The cultural background of literature in Russian was originally historical Russia within the Russian statehood. In the 20th century, this literature divided into the literature of the metropolis and the literature of the Russian-speaking diaspora. Since the end of the XX century, due to historical and political perturbations, literature in Russian is produced in different countries of the world, resulting not only from literary migrations, but also from autonomous literary processes in these regions and countries. It is possible to speak of both global communications in the Russian-speaking world and the existence of local Russian-speaking literary communities. Literature is created by Russian-speaking writers on different cultural bases, it acquires specific features depending on this basis, but also in conjunction with memories of the Russian literary tradition and global literary trends. The subject of the study is not the diaspora community as such, but the historical and cultural situation in which Russian-language literature, originally based primarily within certain state boundaries, goes beyond them and exists independently of those state institutions that have traditionally been associated with it in one way or another. The article characterizes the cultural phenomenon of diaspora as “ethnic marginality”, an ethno-cultural community functioning in a non-ethnic context, and considers the main historical and cultural stages of the relationship between the metropolis and the diaspora. Particular attention is paid to the crisis situation in the writer's work. Being in an alien socio-cultural environment, the writer acquired a special cross-cultural writing experience as a condition and creative reflection, caused by a change of environment and the loss of the familiar, usual values of the native culture, and by questions about one's identity, when previous experiences became an attribute of memory and reflection.