The image of the righteous man in prose of E. D. Aipin

The Khanty literature, which has been developing as the part of the Finno-Ugric literature since 1930s, has some trends shared with the so-called village literature. A. I. Solzhenitsyn was right, when he said that the main thing for village literature is not the image of the village, but "the revival of traditional morality." Together with the artistic method of village prose, which has received development in works of R. P. Rugin, E. D. Aipin, T. A. Moldanova, Z. V. Longortova, the concept of the righteousness, embodying traditional ethnic values, appeared in the Khanty literature. The writers who grew up in Khanty villages (in ancestral settlements) represent the traditional way of life of the people as well as the troubles connected with the industrial development of Siberia. There is no traditional image of a village in Khanty literature. The image of a settlement is formed under the influence of geographical conditions and traditional ways of life of the people (raw-hide tent, winter and summer house, hunting hut, hunting lodge, nomad camp, fishing camp, etc.). Nevertheless, the concept of character drawing is quite traditional for the village prose. One of the demonstrative images of this literary tradition is the image of a righteous person. In the dictionary interpretation of this concept, a righteous man is a person who does not violate the requirements of morality in actions and behavior. In E. D. Aipin's creative work the concept of a righteous person is most clearly seen in the story "In Darkness" and in the novel "Khanty, or the Star of the Dawn." For two characters - Ephraim and Demyan - righteousness is associated with ethnic philosophical view of the world. The righteous man in his works is characterized by unity with nature and earth, involvement in the kin; he seeks to live by the laws of high morality and has his own perception of the world. He reflects the mental peculiarities of the national character. According to V. E. Khalizev, E. D. Aipin's characters - the righteous men - became the "embodiment of the ethnic traditional values". The analysis of the works by E. D. Aipin shows that the righteous man is not able to resist the changes, which civilization has brought to the North. It is no coincidence that the author uses the symbol of night darkness as a marker of death, disappearance of anything bright, kind, spiritually and morally pure both in the world and humans. The righteous men in works by E. D. Aipin live according to ethical norms defining their views and behavior; in line with the ethnic system of moral and religious values and prohibitions these characters implement the concept of righteousness in the Khanty literature.