The love for one’s Doppelganger. The alter ego as myth and reality in Russian literature

Abstract

The subject of this paper is Doppelgänger as a Russian problem interpreted by Russian literature and philosophy. As a rule, the Doppelgänger is a myth created by Russian intellectuals as a means of saving of Russia. As it turns out, however, Doppelgänger possesses an immense destructive potential. Bolsheviks, though themselves an alter ego of intelligentsia, decimated it in the name of peasants and surviving workers, persuading the rest of the people that intelligentsia was their bitterest enemy. Lenin and his party proved highly successful in exploiting the myth of 'rotten intelligentsia' invented by the right-wing ideologists back in the times of monarchy. The Doppelgänger, as in a play by Shvarts, kills the scholar, from which there follow the Russian catastrophes.