“Intellectual kitchens” in L.E. Ulitskaya's novel “The big green tent”: creativity as a stimulus of being

Introduction. The works of L. Ulitskaya are still the subject of increased attention of critics and literary researchers. The novel “The Big Green Tent” marked a new stage in the development of the author’s wortk. Unlike L. Ulitskaya’s early texts, “The Big Green Tent” covers not only the fate of one person or family, but the whole epoch “from Joseph to Joseph” (1951-1990) and, as a result, presents the reader with a whole diversity of heroes and their destinies. The epic swing meets the author’s task - to depict the ideology, the history of Russian dissidence of the indicated period. The article examines the poetics of the novel “The Big Green Tent”, special attention is paid to the theme of creativity, the image of the artist. The research was based on the works of N. Leiderman, M. Lipovetsky, N. Kovtun, O. Osmukhina, N. Polyakova, D. Tishchenko, dedicated to the work of L. Ulitskaya. The methodology of the study was comparative, structural-typological and historical-cultural approaches. The subject of the study is the realization of the theme of creativity in the novel “The Big Green Tent”. Results. Based on the analysis of the novel by L.E. Ulitskaya, it is shown how the perception of the image of the epoch, the problem of creativity, personality in the historical context changes. If in the author’s early works the existence of a person and his environment is brought to the fore, then in this work there is a transformation of the author’s manner. In the textual reality of L. Ulitskaya, there is a need to address not just one human fate, but the fate of entire generations, the core of the story becomes the theme of the relationship between the artist and the authorities. Conclusions. L. Ulitskaya in her work poses the socio-philosophical problems of the relationship between a person and the state machine by placing the heroes of the novel in a real historical context, inscribing their destinies in the history of the country. Creativity becomes the only way for the survival of the individual in a dictatorship.