RECYCLING-OBLIVION: THE STABILIZATION OF THE SCHOOL LITERARY CANON

Abstract

The article presents the results of a quantitative study of a database compiled from previously published datasets related to the Russian school literary canon. The authors examine the history of transformations in curricula, standards, and other official documents over the period from 1974 to 2024, employing computational methods of quantitative research (data processing and quantitative calculations were conducted in Python using the Pandas library). Analyzing the material through the lens of the concept of cultural recycling — and even identifying its forms at the intersection of the late Soviet and post-Soviet periods — the authors conclude that the nearly classical understanding of cultural recycling as the return of previously marginalized elements to the cultural mainstream is not widely applicable to the modern school literary canon. At the same time, the study reveals that the apparent return of school literature curricula in recent years to the “golden era” of the late 1970s and early 1980s occurs through a reverse phenomenon — recycling-oblivion, meaning the restoration of absence and suppression.
The authors provide lists of writers and poets, indicating the time of their inclusion in or exclusion from the canon, as well as a compilation of those whose works have formed the core of the school literary canon over the past 50 years.

Keywords: recycling, post-Soviet school, literary canon, school canon, school, school education, basic general education, secondary general education, standard, educational program, work program, literature