TRANSFORMATION OF EXISTENTIALISM IN RUSSIAN (SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET) LITERATURE

Abstract

The article raises the question about specificity of the Russian literary existentialism. The author puts forward the hypothesis of the scarcity of pure existentialism in the Soviet and postSoviet literature in connection with the transformation of existential ideas in Nietzschean philosophy perceived through the prism of the idea of bermensch: the experience of the existential border situations becomes a marker of the superiority of the literary character over the people around him. The author examines the reasons which make the indicated transformation of literary existentialism become popular in the readers’ circles.