Alexei Kruchenykh in the 1930s–1950s: Poetics, Discourses, Subjectivity

Abstract

The article is devoted to the poetry of Alexei Kruchenykh in the 1930s–1950s. The author is interested in both the organizing techniques and the way the poet’s subjectivity is reflected in it. The article analyzes in detail irony and playing with Soviet discourse, the effect of ambiguous of texts and work with psychoanalytic concepts, allegorism and description of the uncanny. The selected techniques allow me to show that Kruchenykh, about whose attitude to the authorities during the Stalinist period there are almost no memoirs, consistently resisted the practices of Soviet subjectivation by the very process of writing poetry, although he did not resort to direct statements. This brings him closer to a number of unofficial poets of the era. Special attention is paid to the influence of Sigmund Freud’s ideas on Kruchenykh. The article shows that the poet used psychoanalytic discourse at different levels of the texts as a form of pushing away from the imposed language of ideology. It is proved that Freud’s concept, which is explaining the reasons and features of the transition from collective consciousness to individuality, played a special role in Kruchenykh’s writing.