The motive of “allegations of the land” in the Russian literature of 1917-1920s (article II)

Basing on the fiction prose, poetry and essays by D.S. Merezhkovsky, S.N. Bulgakov, G.I. Chulkov, I.A. Bunin, M.M. Prishvin, A.M. Remizov, S.N. Durylin, M.A. Voloshin etc., the article considers one of the most important modifications of the motive “allegations of the land” in the Russian literature of the revolutionary years (1917-1920s), that is to say, relying on its saving power against those Russians who, according to the above-mentioned authors, betrayed their country. It is shown how in the aftermath of the fire of the 1917 revolution, the shift in Russian worldview, due to rupture of the everlasting concepts of “land” and “people”, that “land” became the main bearer of “Holiness” as a national identity. In the view of the people’s “unworthiness” in the era of the Russian disaster (the World War I, the victorious revolution and the Civil War), the center of gravity in the composition of the Motherland concept, Russia, moved to its other component. i.e. the land, the “holiness” of which needed more justification and approval. The paler the idea of a “God-bearing” people became, the brighter was the belief in the “holiness” of the native land in the Russian literature of 1900-1910s. In 1916, the “eternal” image of “Holy Russia” was finally displayed in the Orthodox Church hymnography. In 1918, the following famous verse was added in the divine service to all Russian saints: “Holy Russia, keep the Orthodox faith ”. In this regard, in a number of literary texts the related mythologems “Holy Russia” and “Invisible city of Kitezh” were considered, having received a special soteriological significance in the period of radical breakage, dangerous to the very existence of historical Russia.