“Death in Moscow” by Yuz Aleshkovsky: mortal images, narrative strategy, genre-thematic features

INTRODUCTION. The research is devoted to the study of genre-thematic and narrative peculiarities of Yuz Aleshkovsky’s story “Death in Moscow”. The purpose of the work is to reveal the specifics of thanatological discourse and discourse of political and ethnic anecdote, which form a peculiar poetics and aesthetics of fantastic and mystical narrative. MATERIALS AND METHODS. The material of the study is the little-studied Yuz Aleshkovsky’s novella “Death in Moscow” (1985). The key method is the method of holistic analysis of the artwork, and we also used the motive and narrative approaches. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. It is established that the central plot episodes of the story perform a carnival function, while the artistic methods determine the author’s strategy. At the narrative level, it is embodied in the interchangeability and identity of thirdperson and first-person narration as a minuscule technique and the alleged “removal” of the author’s mask in the use of stream-of-consciousness techniques. At the plot level, these are inserted anecdotes and short stories that satirically depict images of Soviet power, motifs of death, antipochevanism, and cosmopolitanism. CONCLUSION. In Yuz Aleshkovsky’s story, the technique of reducing the images of Soviet power to the realm of material and corporeal bottom becomes not only a leading technique, but also acquires a ritual sacredness: on the one hand, the writer restores the balance of mythological and everyday life, public and private, near and far. On the other hand, in opposition to the official mythology, he creates his own mythology – the mythology of the folk anecdote, a novel-anecdote, devoted to the laughing comprehension of the death of the dying and dying Soviet state.