"Smokotinin's life" as a title story of Vsevolod Ivanov's book "The secret of the secret ones"

The paper deals with the momentous fact of the republication of the book by Vsevolod Ivanov first published in 1926 - «The Secret of the Secret Ones» (Moscow, Science, 2010). The conceptual foundation of the paper includes two starting points: firstly, it states, that the author's ideological-aesthetic concept «the secret of the secret ones» falls outside the scope of manifestation in the framework of one book and appears as a common ground for the development of the writer's creative idea as a whole; secondly, rather than be regarded as an ordinary collection of stories, the book «The Secret of the Secret Ones» should be considered as an integral artistic project, subordinate to the author's single scheme, proceeding from the unity of space, time, composition of characters, stylistics, and poetics. Considered in the aspect of textual coherency are the ideological-aesthetic functions of the first story of the book «The Life of Smokotinin» in the contents analysis of which much prominence is given to the motif complex «chip» and «splinter» as a symbolic designation of man's soul splitting in the situation of the «incomprehensible» time of the 1920s. The underlying connection of the plot-motif and image-bearing structure of the story «The Life of Smokotinin» as the first, initial, «opening» the book «The Secret of the Secret Ones» with the other works contained in it («Night», «Polynia», «Fertility», «Sapega's Death») confirms the specific character of its genre status precisely of the Book.