The Theme of the “Estate and Forest” in the Literature of Socialist Realism in the Late 1940s and Early 1950s (K.G. Paustovsky and L.M. Leonov)

The article traces the development of the theme “estate and forest” in the literature of the 18th–20th centuries. If earlier the forest was perceived as wildness and a threat to humans, then in the 20th century – as a topos of salvation and spiritual renewal. Accordingly, the estate no longer opposes the forest as a cosmos to chaos, but becomes its organic part. In Soviet literature, this is also associated with a return to the ancient Russian understanding of the forest as paradise, so untouched by man nature, which correlates with the traditional paradisiacal connotations of the estate. In the “Tale of the Forests” (1948) by K.G. Paustovsky, the forest estate of P.I. Tchaikovsky is both the locus of high creativity and the focus of the spirit of the people and native nature. Purged of lordship in the Soviet era, it becomes the apotheosis of all that is beautiful on Russian land. The forest cordon also serves as a substitute for the traditional estate, where activity for the benefit of the Fatherland is combined with creativity and love. L.M. Leonov in the novel “Russian Forest” (1953), by contrast, denies the classic estate house as a foreign phenomenon hostile to the Russian forest and the Russian people. The Soviet estate – labor, national, scientific – is becoming the Pashutinsky forestry, which combines the ancient Russian connotations of the forest as paradise and the intentions of communism being built in the country as paradise on earth. The third type of estate topos in the novel is the collective image of the Forestry Institute in Moscow in the 1920s and 1930s, partly dating back to the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy, located in the estate of the 17th–19th centuries Petrovsko-Razumovskoye. So, in the literature of post-war socialist realism, the archetypal status of the Russian estate as an ideal lifestyle and national phenomenon remains.