Kultura na drodze do samozniszczenia - Wiktora Pielewina prognoza dla Rosji
Culture on the road to self-destruction. Victor Pelevin’s prognosis for Russia

Summary/Abstract: The article is an attempt to apply the tools of analytical psychology in the study of contemporary Russian literature. Continuing his research of Victor Pelevin’s early prose, presented in the “Russian Studies Review” (2021, no. 1), the author proposes a comprehensive reading of four novels published between 2006 and 2013: Empire V, T., S.N.U.F.F. and Batman Apollo. From the works of the Russian postmodernist emerges a coherent and even prophetic (as it may seem in retrospect) picture of the gradual decline of Russian culture as a consequence of the interrupted individuation process. This key category in the concept created by Carl Gustav Jung is applied to specific characters and groups presented in Pelevin’s novels, but also to a specific social reality. Such perspective is justified by the attitude of the writer, who describes the process of creating literary worlds as a way of externalizing mental reality, both in its individual and — what is especially important — the collective aspect. Thus, the contents of his works can be treated as a manifestation of the Russian collective unconscious and interpreted in terms of Jung’s analytical psychology.

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