The “Decembrist myth” in the historical works of Bulat Okudzhava and Boris Goller

The article is aimed at tracing the presence of the Decembrist problematics in works of different genres through the analysis of the contextual connections between Bulat Okudzhava’s novel Poor Avrosimov and Boris Goller’s play One Hundred Bestuzhev Brothers in order to establish the intersections and deep connections between authors who were contemporaries. The research methodology included comparative, sociocultural, historical, and literary methods, as well as the holistic analysis of art works. The novelty of the research is that it is the first study of the “Decembrist” plot in Okudzhava’s and Goller’s historical works. The writers created similar fiction worlds, and their works turned out to be very much in tune with the spirit of the time. That said, Goller uses the documentary materials to build a psychologically credible portrait of a historical figure, while Okudzhava in his novel shifts his focus from the image of the Decembrist Pavel Pestel to the spiritual life of an “amateur” who became unwittingly involved in the tragedy. The mention of the Decembrists made it possible to create allusions, or historical parallels between the past and the present, giving rise to a completely new value content of the concept of “freedom”. The article suggests a hypothesis that one important thing the two authors’ views of the Decembrist uprising have in common is their intentional subjectivity aimed at expressing their personal attitudes to the recreated events. All this forms the stylistic basis for their works. At the same time, their narratives are focused not on the direct depiction of the historical events, but on unlocking the moral worlds of the heroes, their experiences, and personal upheavals.