The end of life and the end of the Russian Empire : depictions of the end of life in the historical novels of the Russian émigré community

Abstract

In the years following the Russian Revolution, a sense of having witnessed the end of Russian history, of being “cut off from history” was widespread among the Russian émigrés who had fled Soviet Russia. During these interwar years, the historical novel emerged as one of the genres through which the Russian émigré community tried to make sense of the historical process in general, and the end of the Russian Empire or the democratic Russia of the Provisional Government in particular. In their historical novels, Russian émigré writers such as Pyotr Krasnov and Ivan Nazhivin often articulate their respective conceptions of history through the portrayal of the life of an historical character. This paper aims to explore the different depictions of the end of life of these characters and the function of these depictions within the authors’ ideas on history. Moreover, the paper will consider whether or not the finitude of the character’s life is related to the author’s understanding of the end of the Russian Empire and Russian history