The Prose of K. Vaginov: Literary Strategies an the Problem of Identity

The Prose of K. Vaginov: Literary Strategies and the Problem of Identity is the study of the prose of K. Vaginov in the context of the late 1920s and early 1930s. The “prosaic” period of Vaginov is analyzed taking into account the specificity of the early Soviet mentality. According to the main hypothesis of the study, all four Vaginov’s novels can be considered as variations of the same theme — the identity of a person in the post-revolutionary decades, when every citizen of the new state had to completely change his/her identity, radically rethinking his/her past or even abandoning it. Accordingly, the paper gives a detailed description of how the author was trying to resolve his own identity crisis and to develop a unique literary strategy at the same time, aspiring to integrate into the Soviet literary process and not to lose his strong connection with the literary tradition of both, 19th and 20th centuries.