Солдат и «чудики»: трикстеры эпохи застоя .......... 247

THE SOLDIER AND “ODDBALLS”: THE TRICKSTERS OF THE STAGNATION PERIOD

The article discusses the protagonists of Vladimir Voinovich’s novels about the soldier Chonkin and the “oddballs” in Vasily Shukshin’s stories as characteristic manifestations of traditional trickster narratives about “fools”. These “fools” destabilize and deconstruct social conventions by failing to understand them. In Voinovich’s novels, Chonkin triggers a chain of absurdist events through his “non-understanding”, revealing the true face of the Stalinist state and its heroic myths. Shukshin’s “oddballs” trigger a different kind of crisis, revealing the existential deadends of Soviet life. However, in Voinovich’s novel, the conflict between Chonkin and the Soviet state remains static, while Shukshin’s characters invariably restore the status quo. Despite their “folly”, the tricksters of the Stagnation period are not transgressive enough to produce a deeper destabilization; they are too embedded in Soviet normativity to shake it as their predecessors could.