Демон поверженный: Российская культура XX века

Eta knyga zadumyvalas avtorom kak uchebnyk, a prevratylas po mere raboty nad ney v yspoved cheloveka, vlozhyvshego zhyzn v pogybshee, no ot etogo ne menee ynteresnoe delo — yssledovanye rossyyskoy kultury. Bolnoe porozhdenye bolnoy systemy, russkaya kultura obrechena vmeste s systemoy y pogybnut. Russkaya tsyvylyzatsyya, po mysly Dmytryya Bykova, mozhet eshchyo kakoeto vremya funktsyonyrovat — ynstytutsyonalno yly fyzychesky, no ne soderzhatelno. Soderzhanye proekta yscherpano, on pryshel k logychnomu y neyzbezhnomu samounychtozhenyyu. Yz Rossyy nachysto ushlo, uekhalo yly poprostu vymerlo to, za chto Gospod eyo terpel. A znachyt, avtoru prykhodytsya ymet delo s zavershyonnym protsessom — v etom pryntsypyalnaya novyzna predlagaemogo yssledovanyya. Tolko zakonchennyy protsess y dostupen yzuchenyyu: dlya analyza russkoy kultury segodnya nastupylo optymalnoe vremya, chto y podtverzhdaetsya vsemyrno vozrosshym ynteresom k ney. Razve ne est konechnaya tsel vsyakoy lyteratury — byografycheskoy, v chastnosty, — ponyat, pochemu eto tak zakonchylos? Novaya knyga Dmytryya Bykova — do zhestokosty gorkaya, no pry etom takaya zhyvaya, takaya strastnaya y goryachaya, chto zakradyvaetsya somnenye: do kontsa ly veryt sam avtor v osnovnoy eyo postulat o smerty russkoy kultury?..

This book was conceived by the author as a textbook, and as he worked on it, it turned into a confession of a man who put his life into the dead, but this is no less interesting — the study of Russian culture. A sick product of a sick system, Russian culture is doomed to perish along with the system. Russian civilization, according to Dmitry Bykov, may still function for some time — institutionally or physically, but not meaningfully. The content of the project has been exhausted, it has come to a logical and inevitable self-destruction. What the Lord tolerated her for is completely gone, gone, or simply extinct from Russia. This means that the author has to deal with a completed process — this is the fundamental novelty of the proposed research. Only the completed process is available for study: today is the optimal time for analyzing Russian culture, which is confirmed by the worldwide increased interest in it. Isn't the ultimate goal of all literature—biographical, in particular—to understand why it ended this way? Dmitry Bykov's new book is bitterly bitter, but it is so lively, so passionate and fervent that one wonders if the author himself fully believes in its basic postulate about the death of Russian culture..