THE DEPICTION OF THE REVOLUTION IN O. N. MIKHAILOV’S HISTORICAL-BIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL «THE FORGOTTEN EMPEROR»

Zhang Shicong

The article examines the «revolutionary» part of O. N. Mikhailov’s Historical and Biographical Novel «The Forgotten Emperor». The text of the novel is compared with documentary sources - memoirs of historical figures and research works of historians. The writer presents the revolutionary underground through the prism of the famous renegade revolutionary L. A. Tikhomirov. It turns out that, on the one hand, the narrative about the revolutionaries in the novel consists of extensive excerpts from Tikhomirov's memoirs, which ensures the plausibility of the historical narrative. On the other hand, the writer, selecting and transforming documentary materials, subjects them to revisions following his own statist-monarchist concept. As a result, the image of Tikhomirov is depicted in a simplified form: in the writer's narrative, it is not so much the characteristics of the personality of the famous renegade revolutionary and the evolution of his worldview that are important, but the image of an ordinary person who, being a revolutionary due to various external influences, at the same time values traditions, morality, love, friendship, etc. These dominants determined the character’s gradual radicalization and his departure from the revolution.

Keywords:biography, historical-biographical novel, O. N. Mikhailov, «The Forgotten Emperor».