Childhood in the Russian literature: between two myths

Rad se bavi tematikom djetinjstva u ruskoj književnosti na prijelazu 19. u 20. stoljeće. Uz pretpostavku da su Djetinjstvo Lava Nikolajeviča Tolstoja i Djetinjstvo Maksima Gorkog imali najveći utjecaj na percepciju djetinjstva u ruskom društvu, ta se dva naslova uzimaju kao polazište za analizu. U fokusu je vrijeme između objavljivanja tih dvaju pseudoautobiografija. Naime, pripovijetka „Djeca podzemlja” Viktora Galaktionoviča Koroljenka koja se ovdje posebno analizira objavljena je trideset godina nakon izlaska teksta na kojemu je izgrađen mit o sretnom djetinjstvu i trideset godina prije objave teksta koji će taj mit dovesti u pitanje. Kako bi se razumjele tendencije u književnosti i mjesto koje djetinjstvo zauzima u književnosti i društvu, u radu se daje uvod u društveno-političku situaciju u kojoj tada važnu ulogu ima ideja narodnjaštva.The topic of this work is childhood in Russian literature at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Assuming that both L. N. Tolstoy's and Maxim Gorky's Childhood had the greatest impact on perception of childhood in Russian society, these two works are taken as the starting point of the analysis. The focus is on the period between the publications of these two pseudo-autobiographies. Namely, a story written by V. G. Korolenko entitled „Children of the Underground“ was published thirty years after the publication of the work that was the basis for the creation of the myth of happy childhood, and thirty years before publication of the work that managed to challenge that myth. In order to understand literary tendencies of that period and the role that childhood had in literature and society, this work starts with an introduction concerning societal and political situation, in which the idea of populism (narodnichestvo) plays an important role