The topos of post-Soviet school in Russian short stories of the turn of the XXI century

The article analyzes Russian short stories written at the turn of the XXIst century and dealing with school issues in a variety of ways. It is shown that contemporary short stories are not confined to vignettes of separate psychological types and situations that were typical of schools of the post-Soviet period. The most significant works of this genre («Thunder-storm. 1987» by L. Juzefovich, «Adjunct of Time» by A. Matveeva, «Tender age» by A. Gelasimov, «Himich» by Ju. Bujda) while referring to school realities come to profound general conclusions concerning the time, the world and the human. The topos of school created by the authors of these works is volumetric, ambiguous and many-sided. The article states that the tendency to depict school in a negative way, which is generally an attribute of Russian literature, is partially refined by the authors of short stories, especially those meant for children (such as stories by S. Soroka, T. Krjukova, Ju. Vijra).