“Roars and Groans”: Faces of Ukraine in the prose of V. Astafyev

INTRODUCTION. The images representing various aspects of Ukraine in the prose and epistolary legacy of V. Astafyev are described and analyzed. The most well-known works on the issue are indicated, and the main hypothesis of the research is formulated. MATERIALS AND METHODS. The study employed comparative-historical, biographical methods, and the method of holistic analysis, which constitute a comprehensive approach implemented in the interpretation of components and details of the images of Ukraine in “notches”, stories, and novellas. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. “Civilian Man”, “The Trenches Overgrown with Grass”, “A Handful of Ripe Cherries”, the novellas “Falling Stars”, “Shepherd and His Wife”, “So Want to Live”, “Overtone”, the novel “The Cursed and Killed”, and the letters of V. Astafyev provide grounds to assert that various “phobias”, artificially extracted from the literary legacy of the writer, represent hyperbolically expressed concerns of the artist for the fate and new trials of Russia in its contemporary form. CONCLUSION. The prose writer perceives historical Russia in a traditional, “Gogolian” manner, but tries to discern its new ambiguous faces as well. Ukraine appears to him, like Siberia, as an organic part of the vast Russian universe. Unlike the native Siberia for the prose writer, the faces of Astafyev’s Ukraine conceal contradictory, including infernal, traits, essences, and meanings