Authors
Dmitrii Mazalevskii1; 1 University of Debrecen, Hungary Discussion
The collapse of the USSR and the advent of postmodernism in Russian literature have not only influenced the thematic diversity of the novels in the 1990s, but they also have an impact on their form. One such example is the footnotes and endnotes which Gérard Genette has categorized as paratexts, or, the ancillary elements which clarify information in the main text. In some Russian post-Soviet novels, however, such paratexts are used as an inalienable part of the novel, playing an important role in its structure by introducing a new thread of narrative, deliberately hindering the interpretation. E.J. Maloney terms such footnotes as artificial footnotes. The paper argues that such footnotes also serve as a tool for rethinking the past. Dmitry Galkovsky's novel The Infinite Deadlock, which consists of an essay and 949 endnotes, examines Lenin’s figure, calling him “the actualization of evil”. The work discusses the cyclical nature of Russian thought, which is expressed in the notes. Evgeny Popov's The True Story of ‘Green Musicians’ is a novella, written under the pressure of Soviet censorship. There are 888 endnotes in which Popov critically analyses the novella. Describing himself in his youth, he examines Soviet literature, not only creating a new reading of his work, but he is also rethinking the past. Relying on the works of G. Genette and M. Bakhtin, this paper explores how Russian post-Soviet literature uses artificial footnotes to rethink the Soviet era. 
