Specific Discursive Features of the Magazine Narodopravstvo (1917–1918)

Abstract

The article examines discursive features of the independent liberal-patriotic weekly Narodopravstvo (Democracy) published in 1917–1918 in Moscow and edited by the famous writer-symbolist G.I. Chulkov. The magazine (24 issues, two of them double) served as a “chronicle of the ideas and events of the Russian revolution” from the “fall of the autocracy” to the “Brest-Litovsk agreement” and united the authors of the religious-philosophical and liberal wing of the Russian intelligentsia (N.A. Berdyaev, B.K. Zaitsev, V.I. Ivanov, A.N. Tolstoy, V.F. Khodasevich, I.A. Novikov, A.M. Remizov, S.M. Soloviev, V.N. Muravyov, etc.). These authors often borrowed motifs and images from the New Testament to comprehend the catastrophic modernity. The article gives the classification and analysis of these appeals, and also concludes that in the first months of the growing October Revolution the authors of the Narodopravstvo seldom used the Biblical language. They gradually started employing its syntagmatics and motifs to reflect the formidable character of the drastically changing reality as they came to realize the significance of the changes taking place at home and abroad. The present study discovers, traces back and reflects the process when that resulted in a deeper understanding of the revolutionary reality as well as in the transition from the psychological, ideological, and purely aesthetic reactions to the experiences and insights.

Keywords

• The New Testament
• the Apocalypse
• the Russian revolution of 1917
• the magazine "Democracy"
• journalism
• prose
• poetry
• intellectuals