Features of the representation of everyday life and existence of the village in the early stories of I.A. Bunin and the work of N.E. Petropavlovsky

The article for the first time reconstructs the thematic connections between the early prose (before 1902) of the Nobel laureate I.A. Bunin and the works of N.E. Petropavlovsky (alias - S. Karonin). The author of the article proceeds from the hypothesis of the influence of narodnik literature on the formation of the writer’s prose fiction. This hypothesis is verified, firstly, through the analysis of biographical material, and secondly, through the comparison of various thematic blocks - a correlation between the commonality of social topics and the social environment is revealed. The young Bunin was personally acquainted with N.K. Mikhailovsky and S.N. Krivenko, in the 1890s actively published in populist magazines. Almost all of his stories of this period, especially the first half of the 1890s, are somehow connected with the theme of the village and village life. Petropavlovsky also described the peasant life of post-reform Russia (after the abolition of serfdom in 1861), but, unlike Bunin, he focused not on the personal attitude to the characters and events happening to them, but on the socio-political aspects of inequality between the privileged and subordinate estates of Russian society. The “village” theme was not the only one in the works of Bunin and Petropavlovsky, but it is in it that the features of thematic continuity between Bunin and the narodnik writers are most clearly revealed. Based on the analysis of motifs, typology of characters, the plots of the stories, it is concluded that there are similarities in the representation of everyday life and the existence of the village in the works of Bunin and Petropavlovsky. In conclusion, the author notes that despite some artistic connections based on a close social context, the originality of Bunin’s early prose goes far beyond the specifics of narodnik literature.