Mythologization and demythologization of history in Guzel Yakhina’s novel “Eisen”

The article examines the nature and forms of mythologization and demythologization of history in G. Yakhina’s novel “Eisen” (2025). The purpose of the study is to show how these two opposing strategies interact and determine the uniqueness of the novel’s artistic structure. The article concludes that Yakhina’s novel is based on the principle of dual optics. On the one hand, the writer consistently reconstructs various mythological scenarios that underlie the director’s films: heroic, “cultural”, utopian “light”, and national myths, culminating in the universal myth of Power. On the other hand, the genrecompositional and narrative structure of the novel is focused on demythologization of reality. As a result, the novel’s architecture is based on a constant contrasting shift between genre-stylistic registers and the montage of diverse elements. The article argues that the Soviet historical myth becomes the primary object of demythologization in the novel. Using Eisenstein’s techniques of montage, Yakhina brings back to the reader’s field of vision the things that remains outside of the film myths, raises the question of the ethical price and historical limitations of myth-making, shows the main character as both the creator of the Soviet historical myth and its prisoner, and traces the growing internal conflict between Eisen and the state mythology.

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