The Space Modeling in the Ukrainian Detective Story of the Second Half of the 20th century

Abstract

The relevance of the study is due to the underestimation of the influence of entertainment literature on the formation of ideas about the world in the reader. Therefore, the purpose of the presented article is to demonstrate how the spatial structures of the Soviet detective determine the creation of values, forming collective strategies. The subject of research is the ratio of the foreign and Soviet spaces, as well as local space and imperial space, which was the Soviet one. The main research method is structuralist analysis, and the interpretation of the results obtained with its help was made in the context of the ideas of postcolonial criticism. It defines the novelty of the study, which is to consider the detective texts of the Soviet period as carriers of not only political ideology but also a colonial view. As a result of the research it is found out that modeling of space in the Ukrainian detective story of the 1950s–1980s is defined by a ratio of world and imperial spaces, provided with ethical estimates as well as imperial and local spaces which create the system of knowledge of the world. At the same time, the space of the Ukrainian detective story of this period is significantly narrowed if compared with the detective of the 1920s or the Russian detective of the 1950s–1980s. The described space is often devoid of national features or they are not focused. Instead, attention is focused on the achievements of the power: construction of new buildings, re-equipment of old ones, industrial facilities. The “entertaining” text fixed the replicated by mass media narrative of the civilization mission of the Soviet power and its successes. The urban space is usually determined by production and trade, often illegal. And it is the trade that becomes the core of the image of Moscow, the capital of the Union. There is a hidden rejection of the metropolis in its representation as a center of stolen things selling to foreigners. But the image of Kyiv as an averaged “regional center demonstrates colonial mimicry and assimilation strategy. The space mystification, characteristic of texts about crimes with ideological mechanics, destroyed the association of responsibility for them with specific cities. Instead, memory places accentuated the losses incurred in the fight against the external enemy, and raised the emotional value of the Ukrainian SSR within the Union. Thus, the analyzed texts demonstrate unambiguous relations between the world and the empire, and complex relations between the empire and the colony. In the prospect of research it is advisable to compare the image of space in Russian detectives (metropolitan and regional authors), as well as in detectives of other republics and countries of the Warsaw Pact.