?
Игра в солдатики. Мотив игры в изображении армейской службы у постсоветских авторов (Д. Горчев “Жизнь без Карло”, М. Елизаров “Госпиталь”)
This research addresses the motive of art as a game, a tool used by the Russian writers who described their personal military service experience in the Soviet Army. The research covers Life without Carlo (2010) by Dmitry Gorchev and Hospital (2005) by Mikhail Elizarov. Game is the key to understanding these two pieces of prose. It is a way for the characters to know themselves and to discover the world around them, a tool to deal with this world. In this context, the army service is a game governed by the two major sets of rules. These are the Army Regulations and an informal though must-follow code of conventional practice that integrates a person into the hardline hierarchy. Art in the form of a game governed by these two sets of rules helps the characters to integrate themselves into both the formal and the informal hierarchies. As the contemporary Russian authors tend to take a new look at the Soviet-time past, this research might help to comprehend the development trends of our modern Russian society.