The embodiment of the socio-historical panorama in P. D. Boborykin’s novel “Kitay-gorod”: a synthesis of the artistic and the publicistic

The article is dedicated to the interpretation of a novel by P. D. Boborykin as a notable representative of Russian naturalism in the second half of the 19th century, who not only left an extensive artistic legacy but was also a prominent theorist and researcher of the literary process. The aim of the study is to examine the stylistic and conceptual features of “Kitay-gorod” – P. D. Boborykin’s programmatic novel. The scientific originality of the research is determined by the fact that for the first time, both the main ideological tenets of the writer’s historical and literary concept and the ways of their embodiment in the artistic text are considered. As a result of the study, it has been established that P. D. Boborykin’s theoretical views on the poetics of the naturalist novel determined a significant role for documentary and journalistic elements in its narrative fabric. Having managed to organically combine artistic and journalistic elements in the novel “Kitay-gorod”, the writer intentionally weakened the role of plot and compositional devices characteristic of the traditional realist novel, while achieving a convincing and large-scale depiction of everyday life in its various manifestations. Transforming and adapting to different genre forms, this writing style subsequently demonstrated obvious stability and universality, finding its embodiment in the genre of everyday life descriptions by later authors.