The article is devoted to the Russian bureaucracy as presented in the historical and fantastic narration of M. Saltykov-Shchedrin "The History of a City" and the prob-lem of prototypes of the books’ protagonist. Depending on real historic figures offered as a prototype of Ugryum-Burcheyev, the meaning of the book, which can be perceived either as a cruel parody or as a warning book, changes decisively.
The article analyzes the typological proximity of Russian literary heroines fromOlga Ilyinskaya by Goncharov to Nadia Shumina by Chekhov. The Olgaʼs imageopens a gallery of “dreamers” and “visionaries”. Seekers of the highest truth, theywill exist in literature as long as Russian classical literature itself exists. NadyaShumina, the last in the “idealist” gallery, will not be much different from theirpredecessors, who appeared forty years earlier.
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