HISTORY AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITY IN LENINGRAD UNDERGROUND POETRY: SERGEI STRATANOVSKY AND SERGEI MAGID

The article deals with the ways of constructing the poetic “we” in two poets belonging to the uno cial Leningrad poetry of the 1970s and 1980s, Sergei Stratanovsky and Sergei Magid. In the work of both authors one can notice a polemic with the understanding of the “we” as an undergoing collective subject, a passive participant in the historical process. These poets look at the historical process and the place of “we” in it from di erent angles: the first focuses on the historical process itself, in which “we” can only be a kind of fuel for indi erent historic forces; the second, on the contrary, tries to apply to the actively feeling and acting modern “we” the plots of sacred history, as if reviving them anew, but still not finally taking them out of the biblical context, they remain “shimmering” - belonging both to the fabulous past and to the future.