Retro-Utopia Temptation of Archangel Mikhail Groys By Vadim Mesyats
Abstract
This article discusses the retro-utopian novel Temptation of Archangel Mikhail Groys by Vadim Mesyats. The novel explores an alternative scenario of overcoming the bleak present and entering the future by going back to a past represented by the medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The novel is set in Belarus in 2013. Belarus is shown as the last stronghold of socialism, as the country that has managed to preserve both its recent and more distant past, as the ’paradise regained’, whose boundaries remain transparent for Russia and for the European Union. Belarus is a multi-confessional and (historically) multi-ethnic country, allowing it to uphold the ‘common cause’ of uniting brother nations and initiating their spiritual transformation. Apart from the obvious allusion to N. Fyodorov’s philosophy, the novel also contains multiple reminiscences to the works of V. Soloviev, Gorky’s The Confession, contemporary neo-paganism and discussions of contemporary historians about the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as the second centre for consolidating Russian lands.
Keywords: neo-mythologism, neo-paganism, modern Russian prose, alternative history, Soviet nostalgia
References
[1] Berelovich, A. (2011). Vpered v svetloye proshloye. In Puti Rossii. Budushcheye kak kul’tura: Prognozy, reprezentatsii, stsenarii. T. XVII. Moscow: Novoye literaturnoye obozreniye, pp. 491–499.
[2] Fokin, A. (2011). ‘Budushcheye dva’: opyty teoreticheskogo podkhoda k istorii budushchego. In Puti Rossii. Budushcheye kak kul’tura: Prognozy, reprezentatsii, stsenarii. T. XVII. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, p. 515.
[3] Russkiy Gulliver. (2018, November). Retrieved from http://gulliverus.ru/news/220-po-novomu-romanu- mesyaca-dolzhen-snyat-kino-kventin-tarantino-schitaet-faina-grimberg.html.
[4] Dubin, B. (2011). Rossiya nulevykh: politicheskaya kul’tura – istoricheskaya pamyat’ – povsednevnaya zhizn’. Moscow: ROSSPEN, pp. 512, 349, 14.
[5] Lobin, A. M. (2016). ‘Vechnyye idei’ obnovleniya obshchestva v romane A. Volosa ‘Maskavskaya Mekka’. Filologicheskiy klass, vol. 1, issue 43, p. 83.
[6] Topos. (2018, October). Letyat shchepki. O knige Vadima Mesyatsa ‘Iskusheniye arkhangela Groysa’. Retrieved from http://www.topos.ru/article/literaturnaya-kritika/letyat-shchepki.
[7] Mesyats, V. (2018). “My to, chto voobrazhayem ”. Interv’yu Rubenu Ishkhanyanu: vmesto predisloviya. In: Vtoroj koncert Rahmaninova kak nacional’naya ideya: kritika, polemika, interv’yu. 2013. Saint- Petersburg: NP «Centr sovremennoj literatury». Retrieved from https://mybook.ru/author/vadim- mesyac/vtoroj-koncert-rahmaninova-kak-nacionalnaya-ideya/read/?page=2.
[8] Mesyats, V. (2018). Iskusheniye arkhangela Mikhaila Groysa. Moscow: Izdatelskiy dom ‘E’.
[9] Gudkov, L. (2011). Abortivnaya modernizatsiya. Moscow: ROSSPEN, pp. 514, 511.
[10] Levitsky, G. M. (2014). Ch’ye zhe eto gosudarstvo? In Levitsky, G. M., Velikoye knyazhestvo Litovskoye. Moscow: Lomonosov. Retrieved from https://history.wikireading.ru/301437.
[11] Blok, A. (1946). Sobraniye sochineniy v 2 tomakh. T.1. Moscow: Sovremenny pisatel’, p. 532.
[12] Levinson, A. (2004). Opyt sotsiografii: Stat’i. Moscow: Novoye literaturnoye obozreniye, p. 250.
[13] Vlasova, M. (2001). Russkiye suyeveriya. Saint-Petesrburg: Azbuka-klassika, p. 58.
[14] Schnirelman, B. A. (1998). Neoyazychestvo i natsionalizm. Vostochnoyevropeyskiy areal. Moscow: Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of Russian Academy of Sciences, p. 3.
[15] Falikov, B. (1999). Neoyazychestvo. Novy Mir, issue 9, pp. 14–13.
[16] Gurko, A. V. (2006). Novyye religii v Respublike Belarus’: genezis, evolyutsiya, posledovateli. Minsk: Publishing House of the Moscow Innovation University.