“A TERRIBLE DREAM” ABOUT THE FUTURE AS A VARIANT OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORY

Abstract

Understanding of alternative models of the historical process and different variants of the development of events has become a sign of modern humanities including fiction. The article examines the post-apocalyptic works by D. Glukhovsky* and V. Martinovich, in which undesirable variants of the development of history are presented on the basis of extrapolation of negative trends of modernity into the future. The question is raised that both writers are united by their attention to the traditional topic for fantastic literature — namely of testing ideas, but in projection on the relevant for the 20th–21st centuries problem of language in its influence on the biological/anthropological nature of man. The relevance of this problem is due to the fact that modern civilization is experiencing a conflict of languages symbolically described in the biblical story about the construction of the Tower of Babylon — a conflict of heterogeneous philosophical, ideological, religious views and values, which is aggravated by information pressure. The purpose of the article — to identify similarities and differences in the approaches of writers to understanding this problem — determines the hypothesis and methodology of the study: the combination of genre analysis, hermeneutical and sociological approaches is designed to show the influence of national literary and cultural traditions on the understanding of modern problems. Based on the analysis of genre specifics and plot organization of novels, the possibility of their double reading is determined — as works of mass literature and as a reflection of the writers’ speculation on current philosophical concepts and negative scenarios of the development of history. It is shown that D. Glukhovsky* considers the problem of language as an inability to communicate with the future (“Metro 2033”), as a loss of subjectivity under the influence of information flows (“Twilight”) and the release of aggression (“Post”). V. Martinovich considers language as a code defining national identity and a condition for the existence of a nation (“Mova 墨瓦”), raises the question that the Internet era has formed a new anthropological variety — “an inactive person” who is unable to find a way out of any situation without prompting search engines on the Internet (“Night”).