"Sacrificial" characters in short stories of L.S. Petrushevskaya

The article discusses the specific features of portraying so-called “sacrificial” type of images in the prose of a prominent modern Russian writer L.S. Petrushevskaya. The writer's short and long stories are the genre modifications of classical literary forms of a short story and a novella. Putting the destiny of a single person in the center of a story, the writer is able to concentrate on the detailed portrayal of a contemporary person under complicated if not extraordinary circumstances. In spite of the existing opinion among literary critics who define Petrushevskaya's prose as “cruel realism”, the authors of the article show that the writer is willing to see such features in her characters that let us hope for their escape from the dead end. One of such lifeline personality traits, according to the writer, is ability to sacrifice.