The image of Russia in the play “Republic” by Sergei Davydov

Abstract

   Sergei Davydov's play “The Republic” is dedicated to the Russian residents of Dushanbe, who had to flee to Russia as a result of the civil war that broke out in Tajikistan in the first half of the 1990s. The article examines the image of Russia created by the author and the artistic means by which the author depicts the relationship of his characters with their historical homeland. As a result of the analysis, we conclude that the strategy, chosen by the author, – the transposition of documentary evidence into the poetic form of vers libre, the alternation of the characters’ monologues, the parallels with Soviet and biblical mythology – makes it possible to create a polysemantic text of the play: by avoiding direct conclusions and assessments, the author manages to offer various subjective points of view on the historical events that took place in post-Soviet Russia in the 1990^s and to talk about the present and future of Russia. On the one hand, the image of the indestructible fraternal country, created by Soviet mythology and glorified in the Soviet anthem, is being destroyed; on the other hand, through an analogy with the biblical myth of the world creation, we can trace the idea of the possibility of creating a new Russia and a new myth about Russia.