City space of London as a text-generating mechanism in documental prose of Russian writers of the early 20th century

The paper is devoted to an analysis of London-depicting texts in the documental prose of the Russian culture in the first half of the 20th century. For the first time the image of a city is considered through the relation between a code and a historical reality. This makes it possible to speak about a multi-layer system of perceiving a city within the framework of the Russian mentality. It is shown how a capital of the western civilization is perceived by the Russian consciousness and becomes included in the Russian literary and cultural context.