REFLECTIONS OF ETHNOCULTURAL ASPECTS IN THE NOVELLA BY L. ULITSKAYA «THE FUNERAL PARTY»

Li Mingrui

In the contemporary international situation, when the national question is intensifying, an ethnos as an important group, due to its geographical dispersion and numerical minority, presents significant interest in various fields, including literature. Ethnic groups themselves and the ethnic cultures developing among them influence not only numerous individual countries in which they live and reside, but also the international community as a whole. At the end of the last century, literary works appeared depicting the life of ethnic groups, one of them being «Vesёлые похороны» by Ludmila Ulitskaya. In the novella, the author's tone is delicate and tender, simple and rustic, the language subtle and not straightforward, yet it implicitly expresses various aspects of ethoses and ethnic cultures. In this work, we begin with an introduction to the author Ludmila Ulitskaya and the novella «Vesёлые похороны», based on the concept of ethnic culture, we analyze the characters and specific plots of the novella, generalize the diverse manifestations of ethnic culture embodied in the text of the novella, and finally reveal the significance of writing about ethnic culture.

Keywords:ethnic culture, Russo-Jewish diaspora, émigré identity, ethnocultural conflict, «Merry Funerals».