Central Asian Social Types as an Orientalism Pattern in Leonid Solovyov’s Prose

The literary work of the Russian writer Leonid Solovyov (1906-1962) was widely known in the Soviet period of the twentieth century - but only by means of the novel dilogy about Khoja Nasreddin. His other stories and essays were not included in the readers’ repertoire or the research focus. One of the reasons for this is that the writer was repressed by Stalinist regime due to his allegedly anti-Soviet activities. In the light of modern post-Orientalist studies, Solovyov’s prose is relevant as a subcomponent of Russian Orientalism both in general sense and as its Soviet version. The “Oriental stories” series, which is the subject of this article, has never been the object of scientific research before. The authors of the article are engaged, in a broad sense, in identifying the features of Solovyov’s Oriental poetics, and, narrowly, in revealing some patterns of the Central Asian picture of the world. In particular, the portraits of social and professional types, met by Solovyov there in 1920-1930, are presented. Some of them have sunk into oblivion, others can be found today, in the XXI century. Comparative, typological and cultural methods are used in the interdisciplinary context of the article.