‘I’m a historian by training…’. History in the Scientific, Journalistic and Literary Discourses of Vladimir Sharov

Abstract

The article deals with the historiosophic concept of Russian novelist Vladimir Sharov, namely with the origins of its formation. Discourse and narratological analyses of Sharov’s texts reveal the evolution of his historical and philosophical concept and its variation depending on the type of discourse. The study identifies the principles of processing and representation of historical material in Sharov’s scientific works (this paper is the first to examine his PhD thesis in detail), in his journalistic works and novels. Sharov’s views as a thinker and his techniques as a writer begin to form in his academic historiographical study of historian S. F. Platonov’s legacy: the author focuses on the problems of the Time of Troubles and adopts the approach of using private testimonies and literary texts as sources. Sharov’s journalistic articles conceptualize and scale up the experience of his scientific historical research: the Time of Troubles is seen as an invariant of other instances of Russian turmoil; revolutions and changes of power are treated as recurring patterns; historical events are comprehended in the logic of religious, social, and political constants of Russian mentality. In the novels, these concepts become the background and the starting point for the unfolding of literary metaphors, fantasy assumptions and, eventually, the writer’s profound insights. The study of Sharov’s fictional texts leads to a conclusion that his prose is dominated by the metanarratives of messianism, eschatology, providentiality of Russia’s path, and the cyclical nature of history. The conclusion is made about the decisive role of Sharov’s historical research experience in the formation of his artistic method, about the mechanisms of transformation of historical discourse into fictional discourse, about the nature of Sharov’s historiosophic concept, rooted in domestic culture, but having its own specificity.