Bunin and Ertel: plot parallels

The environment in which the future Nobel laureate was brought up, constant communication with representatives of the populist movement, as well as a close relationship with his brother Yu.A. Bunin, could not but influence him. However, the topic “I.A. Bunin’s Early prose and Narodnik literature” is undeveloped for Russian literary studies and has not been considered by researchers before. The article is devoted to the analysis of the stories of A.I. Ertel and the early work of I.A. Bunin. Since populism was aimed at studying peasant life, the main attention in the work is paid to the types of peasants that we find in the in the stories “Zemets” and “Popleshka” by A.I. Ertel, writer of narodnik views, as well as in the early works of I.A. Bunin, in the stories “Kastryuk” and “Suddenness” (“News from the Motherland”). It is revealed that the peasants from these stories have common features and characteristics, and the stories “Popleshka” and “Surprise” (“News from the motherland”) are a response to socially significant events - crop failures of 1880 and 1891-1892, respectively. The image of peasants of approximately the same age, their common experiences, difficulties and hardships, the same weather and time of day, the use of similar motives allows us to assert the creative dialogue of I.A. Bunin with A.I. Ertel. However, the goals pursued by both writers are completely different: A.I. Ertel creates a generalized image of a peasant, representing a type of post-reform peasant, and I.A. Bunin focuses on the personal experiences of his characters, their state of mind.