The structure and meaning of the “estate topos” in the A.N. Tolstoy’s story “Nikita’s Childhood”

The article investigates the structure and artistic function of the “estate topos” in the story of A. Tolstoy “Nikita’s Childhood”. First of all, is considered “The Case of the Samara provincial Council by the insurance Department on the adoption of the fear of the real property owned by the landowner Yakov Mironov and located near the village of Pavlovka (Sosnovka also), Vozdvyzhensky parish of the Nikolaev district of the Samara province” on the basis of which the con- clusion that was sold by the stepfather of the future writer A. Bostrom land owner J. Mironov real estate “near the village of Pavlovka (Sosnovka also)”, depicted by A. Tolstoy in the story “Nikita’s Childhood”. Further, the structure of the estate space in the story is studied and it is concluded that all the components of the estate topos — garden, ponds, cellars, barns, etc. — are in the process of non-stop metamorphoses that set in motion the entire estate as a whole; these metamorphoses constitute the real plot of the story. In conclusion, a fantastic hypothesis of the organization of the “estate topos” in “Nikita’s Childhood” is proposed, which brings this story closer to the works of A. Tolstoy in the genre of fiction and, above all, to the story “Aelita”.