I. Babel’s literary cycle “Velikaya Krinitsa” as seen through the lens of the modern

The article analyzes two novels by Isaac Babel of the early 1930s about collectivization - “Gapa Guzhva” and “Kolyvushka”. The novels were supposed to be a part of a literary cycle about collectivization under the general title “Velikaya Krinitsa”, but the idea of the book about the transformations in the Soviet collective farms turned out to be unfulfilled. In both novels, Babel shows a grandiose modernization project of collective farms as a process that destroys the existing order and the lives of people. This dialectic of transformation and destruction, construction and decay is characteristic of the modern. The work aims to identify the temporal structure features of the novels and explores them from the perspective of the Modern values and problem areas, described by Aleida Assman in the book “Is Time out of Joint?: On the Rise and Fall of the Modern Time Regime”. The study attempts to consider the temporal structure of the novels (the relationship between the future and the past, acceleration and deceleration of time and other aspects) given the Modern time regime and the prerequisites forming its worldview. It is noteworthy that this work is undertaken on the subject for the first time. The novels cover such aspects of the Modern time regime as the temporal rupture, the fiction of beginning, creative destruction, the invention of the historical and acceleration, as well as the consequences of these aspects: the destruction of ties, the collapse of the former world order, the change in the time perception etc. It is concluded that in “Gapa Guzhva” and “Kolyvushka”, the temporal structure differs in intensity and forcing characteristic of the Modern time regime, and also reflects its prerequisites and consequences.