myth

This is a review of a collected volume of articles prepared by Professor M. Stroganov for his 70th Anniversary. The book intertwines two main academic interests of the author, mixed up in a special, unique to the researcher, methodological paradigm. These are the attention to the literary or folklore text as well as the focus on the diversity of Russian culture in its broadest spectrum: song and singing, music and painting, and the various facets of the theatrical arts.

This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of two interpretations of Pavel Pestel’s personality and fate in the literature of the late Khrushchev thaw. The contribution of the peer writers to the liberation of cultural and historical memory from offi cial dictatorship is discussed, the basis of their ideological similarity is shown: this is the awareness of the fatal problem of morality and revolution (Zorin).