"A Time Apart" and Some Problems of the Historical Novel

The most important problem of a historical novel, as well as of any work of art, is its attitude to the present. Every significant historical novel is indicative of the moods, aesthetic principles, tastes and preferences of its time. To discover the modern in history, to draw the reader's attention to one or another of its sides, to one or another aspect of well-known and usually not new historical problems - this is an individual creative work. The category of subjectivity retains its place in our aesthetics as the writer's right to an original creative interpretation of the topic on the basis of the objective-materialist approach to history. This is a subjectivity of a new quality, which has nothing to do with the arbitrariness of subjectivism, since the writer does not oppose himself to the deep and enduring social moods, but, on the contrary, strives to express them as clearly and fully as possible.