Published in: Time in Science and Art. Proceedings of the Third Scientific Conference of the Urania Club, held on November 10, 2024. - Hanover: Seven Arts, 2025.

My hypothesis is that Alexei Makushinsky has created a new format for a novel written on historical material.

There is the historical novel, which already has a considerable tradition, and since some time there has also been the “non-historical” novel invented by Yevgeny Vodolazkin (starting with “The Laurel”; there have already been successors); Makushinsky has dared to propose another model of the relationship between major prose and history. His novel contains some elements of a literary practice that has already been well mastered alternative history - In Makushinsky's version, Tsarevich Dimitri, who died in Uglich, remains alive - he is not only saved, but even resurrected, literally brought back from death (and it is even shown in detail how this is done - from inside the consciousness of the resurrected), so there is also an element of fiction here - he is brought up by his savior in Courland, educated in Poland, and returns to change the course of history - Russian, and thus European and world history. But Makushinsky's novel does not fit into the framework of alternative history either, especially since the rescued Tsarevich Dimitri does not change the course of history, and this, in fact, is not in the slightest way influenced by the fact that it was the real son of John the Terrible who tried to regain power in Muscovy, and the ”certainly not Grishka Otrepiev“. As the one who is known to us as False Dmitry the First (and according to Makushinsky's version and the narrator himself - Dimitri the one and only true), the hero perishes - in the in that time, and as ... hmmm - himself continues to live in another historical epoch, practicing the same biographical model for a new time: playing himself in a play about Dimitri in a Moscow theater”in a small area“. We can even see how his biological ages are distributed over these epochs: childhood, adolescence, youth - late XVI - early XVII century, early-early maturity (”we were very young in that distant winter.“) - the very last years of Soviet power, 1990-1991, before the putsch and the collapse of the former life. Demetrius tells about all this himself - in writing - from outside and from a (bitterly ironic) distance: from some extratemporal point of observation (and indefinable space), addressing some addressee - his contemporary from a later time (”Do you still remember that time, ma'am? There were still two cars passing down the street per hour, one Volga, one Zhiguli; there were no computers yet....The first of these is the “I am a woman of the same age”), and perhaps to more than one - calling her contemporary and earlier, even conversing with her: “...I understand you perfectly, ma'am....”, and not only to them - ”.so as not to bore you, signor and signorita.…»; «…I know that as well as you do, monsieur....” - to different, different times and cultures; from the point at which he is situated throughout the novel, he can presumably be heard in all directions of the world. Both of the times recalled are emotionally very close to him at the time of the story, very much his own, and he speaks about both of them as his own, practically in his own language, making no distinction between them in this respect and certainly not keeping them at a distance from each other: “...”.That I was once in love with Marina Mnishek is, of course, a fiction; it was a matter of state, of power...,” he says immediately as he remembers his theater colleagues. - ”There was also Shuisky (unusually nasty), Mnishek-papa (no less nasty, fatter than Shuisky twice and a half), Basmanov, Peter (red-cheeked, sad and cheerful), Margeret (a real Frenchman), Bussov (German, landsknecht and bully), tail-shaped Khvorostinin, and various others. Rubets Mosalsky, a record villain, a kind-hearted man...”. And both times are equally far from him. In fact, that is why we have to talk about them.

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