Fedunina Olga Vladimirovna – Candidate in Philology, Senior Researcher at the Department of “Literaturnoe Nasledstvo” (“Literary Heritage”), A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences; ORCID ID: 0000-0001-6874-248X
This article examines the use of animalistic imagery and the features of the bestiary code in Russian crime fiction of the “Thaw” period. Distinguishing between the application of this code at the speech level and within the character system, the author, given the specifics of the material, focuses on the former. The analysis centers primarily on the bestiary metaphors found in the Soviet police procedural stories by P.F. Nilin, A.G. Adamov, V.V. Smirnov, A.M. Shey¬nin, Yu.S. Semenov, and other authors. The undertaken analysis concludes that the crime literature of the “Thaw” continues to develop an ideologically charged opposition, established in the early post-revolutionary period. This dichotomy can be framed as follows: the beast as an enemy, alien to the laws of Soviet society, versus the investigative officers who embody humane and ethical principles. A new development at this stage is the testing of the protagonists not only professionally but also morally and ethically (humanly). This shift actualizes the genre of the povest’ (novella) in the “Thaw” literary field, with its inherent and invariant raising of profound ethical questions.
crime fiction; the Thaw; povest’ (novella); bestiary code; Soviet literature; animalistic metaphor