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Abstract:

The purpose of the article is to show that M. Gorky’s work “V.I. Lenin”, declared as “memories”, is in fact an essay, which was almost initially understood by critics and publishers. Avarice of the material is not misleading: there is an artistic reconstruction of the image of Lenin with a clear trend. Gorky characterizes his hero, the leader of the proletarian revolution, the creator of the world’s first proletarian state, as “a child of the cursed world”. A new world is born in blood and pain, and his demiurge is identical to him: he bears the seal of the former (“damned”) world and at the same time is the forerunner of the new, as the writer believed, full of joy of the world. Therefore, he creates an image of a man representing a unique fusion of hero and victim, judge and lawyer, modern Socrates and comic character, shows the leader in the zone of both official and familiar contact, where he is depicted as a person capable of rejoicing, smiling, joking, laughing. “Laughing” characteristics in the text more than 30. They mean not only the natural reaction of a person to a funny situation or a sharp word, but also serve as a means of self-defense, an instrument of shaming the enemy. The main thing-laughter allows you to highlight the image of the leader in the light of Gorky’s understanding of man as the bearer of the new faith, the creator of the new world, capable of defeating the ideology of suffering characteristic of Russian society by the implementation of the idea of harmonious life-building.

Keywords: death/birth, suffering/well-being, laugh characteristics, child cursed world, leader, man, media, new faith.