Christian images and motifs in the Kizhi plots of Russian prose in 1960 - early 1970-s

The article presents an analysis of Christian topics in prose works about the island of Kizhi. Methodologically, the study combines the approaches of studying the local text that have already become conventional, with the principles of historical poetics, bringing back the possibilities of diachronic analysis. This allows to take into account both the timeless semantic constants of the Kizhi Island image in literature, and the intellectual context of late Soviet literature, which is now attracting the attention of many researchers. 1960-70s are the period when the largest number of texts about the island appeared. The article offers a classification of the Christian topoi in the texts of that period. Three works by different authors are considered in more detail (Yu. Kazakov’ short story Adam and Eve , I. Mazuruk’s short story Kizhi , and V. Pul'kin’s book The Kizhi Tales ), in which the Christian topic is represented both explicitly and implicitly - in the images of the church, icons, biblical story about Adam and Eve, gospel images of the apostles. In Soviet prose and poetry, the primordial religious meaning of Christian topoi is most often concealed in the subtext. The depiction of Christian symbols is ambivalent and requires legitimization: through folklore, through the theme of historical memory, dialogue of the past and present, etc. This kind of ambivalence clearly illustrates the complexity of the intellectual and spiritual atmosphere of the Thaw and the contradictory attitude of Russian literature towards the Christian traditions.