Genre and stylistic features of the 102 Days in Political Prison Behind Bars by holy martyr Sergius Lavrov

The article is devoted to the analysis of the work of one of the representatives of the clergy of the Tambov diocese of the first half of the 20th century, the rector of Peter and Paul Church in Tambov, Archpriest Sergiy Lavrov, who suffered several short-term imprisonments in correctional institutions of the city of Tambov for belonging to the “Tikhon Patriarchal Church” and resisting the tyranny of the Soviet government in relation to the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1920s. In one of them, the future holy martyr had the opportunity to keep a diary, the entries from which have survived to this day. The text under study, entitled by the clergyman himself 102 Days in a Political Prison Behind Bars with the subtitle Diary of a Prisoner, is of interest not only as a historical monument, but also as a work of art reflecting the inner world of the author and his attitude to the events happening to him. The reader becomes a witness of the extraordinary artistic abilities of the author, who before the events described took an active part in the life of the diocese as a deputy of diocesan and district congresses, and then the chairman of the Diocesan Administration. In this article, the author defines the type and genre of the writing, its stylistic features, highlights lexical layers and analyzes their role in the general outline of the text, and also considers some artistic techniques that Archpriest Sergius uses to immerse the reader in the described events in order to assess his controversial era. The methodology of the study is based on philological and sociolinguistic principles. The study analyzes the use of artistic, official-business, colloquial, church-religious styles, which the author of the text, the holy martyr, combines to achieve the set task.