The emigrant myth of culture of the Russian abroad: genesis and mythemes

The article provides the characteristic of structure and genesis of “the emigrant myth” of culture of the Russian abroad of “the first wave”. The emigrant myth is considered in a wide context of a concept of “the modern myth”. It is supposed that the modern myth genetically and is structurally connected with the traditional myth that allows to speak about the myth as one of mechanisms of designing a worldview. The emigrant myth is considered as a phenomenon of transitional era. Social crisis gives rise to invariant mythemes. They design the myths caused by a cultural and historical paradigm which are filled with concrete historical contents and are fixed in the corresponding social and political ideologems. The conclusion about a genetic linkage of the emigrant myth and the traditional cosmogonic myth is drawn. At the same time mythemes of Space, Chaos and Return act as the basic structural elements of the emigrant myth. At the same time pre-revolutionary Russia fits into a symbolic paradigm of a mytheme of Space. Revolutionary Russia is symbolized by a destructive mytheme of Chaos. Life in emigration, in turn, is caused by symbolics of a mytheme of Return (Space).