Terror of intellect: repressive spirituality in the novel “Ugly swans” by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

The prose of the brothers Strugatsky can be considered in the context of the united “metaplot of person” that is developing between the idea of the death of God, dominating in the literature of the last third of the XIX century, and the idea of the death of the man, defining the spiritual search of the writers of the XX century. There are studied the basic principles and inner logic of the new spirituality of “mokretsy» – the members of intelligentsia. The analysis of the legend about the Gammelnskiy rat catcher in the structure of the novel allows to define the genesis of the literary origins of the new value system and demonstrates the prognostic function of allusion in the plot.