Abstract
<jats:p>It is known that during her youth Mire (A.M. Moiseeva, 1874–1913) was involved in revolutionary activities, which made her a target of police surveillance and drove her to emigrate afterwards. The writer’s interest in the revolutionary movement and her reflections on the fate of the socialist parties are demonstrated in “Pages from a Diary”, her autobiographical story written in 1912. This article studies the writer’s stories, in which the motives of social catastrophes are present. Mire witnessed revolutionary uprisings in St. Petersburg. The heroine of the story “The Girl” (1905), an innocent child, turns out to be a victim in a crowd, overwhelmed not so much by a revolutionary impulse as by a thirst for bloodshed and violence. The plot of the story is based on the opposition of two different modes of human existence: the loneliness of a defenseless being and the unity of an angry crowd that is ready for any immoral act. Attention is paid to the symbolic background of the developing events, as well as the expressionist poetics of the work. The theme of the “revolt of the masses” could be found in the story “The Hermit” (1905), in which, in addition to the collision of the belligerents, the conflict of the crowd and the individual, who is able to overcome the voluntarily chosen alienation, is also revealed. The story of “The Preacher of Death” (1909), which could be taken as a variation of the same theme of the confrontation between the individual and the masses, echoes the author’s life experiences. The protagonist of the story has a corrupting and pernicious influence on people who have gathered to listen to his mystical sermon. All of these works are written in the neo-romantic spirit that glorifies the struggle for freedom.</jats:p>