Cycle of Open Letters in V.G.Korolenko’s Publicistics within Civil War Period

Abstract

The article considers the specificity of publicistic works as a historical source, which simultaneously reflected and shaped the public opinion of a certain epoch. Among the acknowledged leaders of opinions, the most authoritative and well-known publicist of the country at the beginning of the XXth century is V.G. Korolenko. His “Letters from Poltava” and “Letters to Lunacharsky”, written during the Civil War in Russia, had a different background, but one goal was to stop the violence. On the basis of the comparative analysis of cycles, general and particular in the author’s coverage of the most pressing problems of that time was revealed. The civil position of the human rights activist, defending humanistic values and democratic freedoms is characterized in open letters addressed to both warring parties. The ideological dominants of the texts are defined as the struggle against bloodshed and lawlessness that has engulfed the entire country, exposing utopian ideologies of both monarchist reactionaries and Bolsheviks. The author’s position on the issue of the state structure of Russia is revealed. The compositional and stylistic features of the cycles are considered, which are closely related to the specific destination (white and red) and the potential audience of the journalistic speech. The contribution of V.G. Korolenko in the development of the genre of open writing is demonstrated.

Keywords

• publicistics
• Korolenko
• Civil war
• open letter
• cycle
• theme
• idea
• genre
• method