“THE POWER OF DARKNESS”: THE OEUVRE OF SERGEI MILOVSKY (S. ELEONSKII)

The research focuses on the oeuvre of writer Sergei Milovsky (S. Eleonskii) who lived in the town of Sarapul, Russia, in the late 19th — early 20th centuries. The writer’s stories are presented as a part of the “Ural mega-over-text”, which needs further research, thus determining the topicality of this work. The novelty of the study is due to the fact that Milovsky’s works have not yet become the object of a detailed philological analysis. The paper traces the connection of the writer’s stories with the works by A. Chekhov, M. Saltykov-Shchedrin, as well as with the Russian populist (narodnik) writers (G. Uspensky, N. Zlatovratsky, N. Naumov, F. Nefedov, F. Reshetnikov). Milovsky’s oeuvre reflects the crisis of the late 19th — early 20th century Russian reality, the search for a way out of which is connected, on the one hand, with the ideology of populism (narodnik movement), on the other — with the clerical idea. The analysis of his stories shows that both ways prove to be dead ends for the author. “Going to the people” reveals its inconsistency, since Milovsky realizes that the enlightenment of the pagan population and its conversion to Christianity is fraught with deep cultural and religious conflicts. At the same time, the writer reveals the crisis and degeneration of the clergy, which finally lost its influence on the people at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. The awareness of the impasse leads Milovsky to the conclusion of the impossibility of staying in the present reality, to “individual liquidation” as he puts it.