• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.46
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• pp.281-296
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• 2017

Andrei Amalrik's plays are a unique phenomenon in the 70 years' history of Soviet drama. Half a century after the Soviet theater had intentionally forgotten its own achievements of avant-garde dramaturgy in the early 20th century, his bizarre plays suddenly emerged in the Soviet theater environment, completely separated from contemporary Western practices of the experimental theater. Surprisingly even now, Amalrik's plays have almost been forgotten not only in Russia but also by foreign Russian literary scholars. Amalrik's autobiographical essay is his only book published in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet regime. There is no collection of his works, and reevaluation of his work is not found even in Russia. However, Amalrik is a writer who should get a proper evaluation. The purpose behind studying his plays is to restore the tradition of Russian grotesque-absurd dramaturgy, which has been inherited from Gogol, Khlevnikov, Mayakovsky, and Oberiu. In this paper, we will analyze the mechanism of composition in Amalrik's plays.