GENRE UNIQUENESS OF THE HISTORICAL NOVEL “THE ARCHITECTS” BY A. M. VOLKOV

Introduction. Conceived in 1946 by the children’s writer A. M. Volkov historical novel about the era of Ivan the Terrible was published in 1954 under the title “The Architects”. Volkov addressed a turning point in Russian history, when there was the formation of autocratic statehood, the strengthening of the Russian centralized multi-ethnic state. All these historical processes are reflected in the architecture of the sixteenth-century Moscow Cathedral of the Intercession on the Rvu, known as the Church of St. Basil. Aim and objectives. The principles of artistic historicism in the novel “The Architects” by A. M. Volkov are investigated. The influence of genre models of the Western European historical novel of the Romanticism epoch on the way and methods of construction of plot-compositional whole of the work “The Architects” is considered. Material and methods. The article examines the historical novel “The Architects” by A. M. Volkov. Comparativehistorical and typological methods of analysis of the work of fiction were used. Results and discussion. Volkov’s historical novel stands in the tradition of Western European and Russian historical novels of the Romantic era. At the same time in terms of plot construction, composition, in terms of building a system of characters and even chronotopically the novel is divided into two unequal parts. The first three parts are written on the type of adventure-psychological novel, the model of which was laid by Walter Scott. This genre variety of the historical novel is characterized by combining the themes of war and peace, public and private life, and the fate and position of the main character is closely related to the changing historical situation. The last two parts are written in the type of adventure-philosophical novel, a striking example of which is Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris. The main theme is not the life and adventures of the hero, not a historical or political turning point in the life of the nation, but the connection of history and architectural construction, the statement of moral, ethical and aesthetic values of national culture at a crucial time. Conclusion. The novel “The Architects” shows the erection of the Moscow Cathedral of the Intercession on the Rvu as a monument in honor of an important historical event – the capture of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible. But the Intercession Cathedral is an expression “in stone” of the whole historical era of the formation of the Russian national autocratic state. This masterpiece of Russian architecture embodied identity, originality and national originality of Russian culture, the departure from imitation of Byzantine aesthetic thought, the idea of unification of nearby lands and different ethnic groups around Moscow.

A. M. Volkov, genre, historical novel, Ivan the Terrible, artistic historicism, socialist realism, architects, the Cathedral of the Protection of the Rvu