«Военная» проза И.С. Шмелёва и Г.Д. Гребенщикова: жанровые стратегии

The Military Prose by I.S. Shmelev and G.D. Grebenshchikov: Genre Strategies

The examined the main fire models of the military prose by G.D. Grebenshchikov and I.S. Shmelev. The relevance of the work is determined both by the selected material – little-studied and first introduced into scientific circulation essays and stories about the First World War, and by the aspect of research – identifying the specifics of the author’s positions and genre strategies of writers. The task is to compare the war correspondence of Grebenshchikov, a participant in the First World War, whose essays are a look at the events from the inside and Shmelev, who spent the war years in the rear, a view from the outside: the perception of the war by ordinary people in the hinterland. The various life and creative positions of the authors contribute to recreating an objective picture of the First World War. This approach to the work of writers makes it possible to identify Grebenshchikov’s main genre models – notes, sketches, travel essays with a predominance of autobiographical motives, as well as a tendency to fictionalize Shmelev’s military prose. At the same time, both prose writers have similar genre strategies associated with the evolution from essays and short stories to the novel form. © 2025, RUDN University. All rights reserved.