The Estrangement Effect of Emigration: Emigrant Identity and a Typological Approach to the Literature of the Russia Abroad

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.22455/Emigr.3034-3518-2025-3-16-76
  • УДК / UDC: 821.054.7.0
  • EDN:

    https://elibrary.ru/ZVGTCE
  • Publication Type: Research Article
  • For Citation:

    Ponomarev, E.R. “The Estrangement Effect of Emigration: Emigrant Identity and a Typological Approach to the Literature of the Russia Abroad.” Emigrantica. Issue 3, ed.-comp. E.R. Ponomarev, acad. ed. E.R. Ponomarev, ed. A.V. Protopopova, M.S. Shchavlinskii, D.V. Zaitsev. Moscow, IWL RAS Publ., 2025, pp. 16–76. (In Russian) https://doi.org/10.22455/Emigr.3034-3518-2025-3-16-76
  • Author 1: Evgeny R. Ponomarev
  • Information about the Author 1:

    Evgeny R. Ponomarev, DSc in Philology, Leading Research Fellow, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya St., 25 А, bld. 1, 121069 Moscow, Russia; Professor, F.M. Dostoevsky Russian Christian Humanitarian Academy, Fontanka River Emb., 15, 191011 St. Petersburg, Russia.
    E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5508-6532.
  • Abstract: The article is one of the first experiments in the typological description of the 20th century Russian emigration literature (1920–1991) as a single literary process (from the first to the third wave), standing apart from both prerevolutionary Russian literature (Russian literary classics) and Soviet literature. This “other” Russian literature, placed outside time and space (scattered all over the world and considering modernity to be unfulfilled), has its own development principles. They are defined, in the author’s opinion, firstly, by four anthropological shifts (everyday-cultural, psychological, political, religious — the two first have common impact) that any emigrant experiences. Secondly, by the deepest sense not only of art, but also of life as passing by, but standing nearby. The author considers the literature of the Russia Abroad to have a closed list of themes and a special genre system, within which documentary genres organically interact with large fiction ones that create an apologia of the bygone Russia. The hero of emigrant literature, according to the author, has the same fundamental characteristics from the first to the third wave: the central ones are the love for an ideal Russia, the split in the intellectual consciousness, which was established back in the nineteenth century and gradually overcome, and the inner freedom that gives new opportunities. Detailed observations made on representative texts of all three waves lead the author to the conclusion concerning the uniqueness of the Russian emigration literature. It had been a literary process flowing outside the frames of any national literature.
  • Keywords: Russian emigration literature, Russia Abroad, Bunin, Merezhkovsky, Shmelev, Nabokov, Varshavsky, Gazdanov, Leonid Rzhevsky, Dmitry Klenovsky, Ivan Elagin, Alexander Zinoviev, Aksenov, Voynovich.
  • Страницы / Pages: 16–76

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  • Received: November 20, 2023
  • Approved after Reviewing: December 23, 2023
  • Publication Date: December 29, 2025

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