Chronicle of Russian emigration: transformations of the diary genre in emigrant culture (on the example of the literary heritage of V.N. Muromtseva-Bunina)

The article offers a new approach to the diary genre in the literature of Russian emigration. The diaries, which many emigrants began writing during the Civil War and wrote throughout their lives, are considered as a chronicle (letopis') of a new time, with a number of characteristics similar to the ancient Russian chronicle. A parallel is drawn with a special biographical genre that occupied an exceptional place in the literature of Russian emigration: hagiographic biography, which borrowed a number of structural features from ancient hagiography. As an illustration, the diary of V.N. Muromtseva-Bunina is offered. She wrote diary regularly from 1918 (perhaps the diary was started earlier, but almost no entries for earlier years have survived) until her death in 1961. This diary reflected the political changes in the life of the emigration, the historical and cultural relationships of the emigrant elite, and the private life of the Bunin family. Against the backdrop of large-scale historical changes, the life stories of their friends and acquaintances, historical and literary connections and ruptures unfold. Using this diary as an example, the author proves his theoretical positions: the most important characteristics of this text are a constant political background, comprehension of the present and modeling of the future, a sense of post-history, biblical apocalypticism. This is not an ordinary diary, but a diary created with an eye to eternity, seeking to record the events of the last decades of Russian culture. Thus, the emigrant diary is a special type of diary prose that does not fit into any type of the usual typology of diaries