The course introduces the mostly unknown literature with reference to better known historical figures of the First World War and the Russian Civil War. The literary part deals with mass military fiction and the works of various authors of the period. The early stories of the later famous Soviet male authors Boris Lavrenev, Boris Pilnyak, Pavel Bliakhin, Veniamin Kaverin, Eduard Bagritsky, etc., will be analyzed from the intertextual point of view. The study of the novels of Sofia Fedorchenko, Liusia Argutinskaya, Tatiana Dubinskaya, the "forgotten" women writers who took part in these wars, as well as the memoirs of unknown nurses, will shed light on the Sisters of Mercy and female soldiers as underexplored heroines. The course shows how historical and semi-mythological images and stories, such as the legend of Stepan Razin, were linked to wartime images of women. The historical part will reveal the origin of female commanders of the Russian Civil War fictional characters from the images of people described in historical documents. All texts will be placed in a broad historical, biographical, cultural and social context.
- Teacher: Olga Simonova