BETWEEN DOCUMENTARY AND FICTION: FEATURES OF THE CONTENT OF THE NOVEL BY SVETLANA ALEXIEVICH "ZINC BOYS"

Gao Zixian

The subject of the study is the novel by Svetlana Alexievich "Zinc Boys" (1989). Its purpose is to identify the content aspects of this story as one of the most notable works of Russian non-fiction prose. The main research methods are analytical, descriptive and logical comparison method. The analytical method is used in the study of the role specifics of the main parts of the work, the identification of key characters and their characteristics. The descriptive method is used in the comparison and generalization of literary and critical materials. The method of logical comparison is necessary when considering the contradictory image of war created as the narrative develops by its various participants. Each of the parts of S. Alexievich's book opens a person's path to the mysteries of existence in its own way. In the first part, a soldier goes to war, in the second part he meets death for the first time, in the third part his fate is decided: he will return home alive or in a zinc coffin. The narrator's thoughts and ideas are transmitted through diaries, interviews, through the discordant confessions of soldiers and nurses, wives and mothers, through memories of everyday combat. The author of this study comes to the conclusion that the writer with great expressiveness recreated, first of all, the traumatic emotional experience of a generation of Soviet people of the 1980s who found themselves in a world alien to them and generally hostile to them, and also attracted readers' and public attention to the pain and suffering of their relatives.

Keywords:"Zinc boys", non-fiction prose, documentary fiction, Afghanistan, Svetlana Alexievich, narrative, confession, homeland