The “sibirica” plot in literary and artistic transformation (on the history of one controversy)

The research employs the comparative-historical method to expand insight into the so-called “Siberian text” and introduce new materials into academic circulation. The author uses works by the leaders of Siberian Oblastnichestvo (regionalism) of the mid-19th century and by the creators of the Far Eastern literary and artistic futuristic collections of the early Soviet rule to identify different approaches and views on the “Sibirica” plot in the emerging Siberian literature and art. This material under discussion has hardly ever been addressed or systemically analysed, which makes it comprehension relevant. The “Idea of Siberia” has become the main paradigm of the creative heritage of senior Oblastniki (regionalists). The founders of the Siberian doctrine put into it their view of Siberia as integrity. Siberian culture was to shape in this logic, too, developing its own type of an artist with a clear awareness of the “idea of place.” The main theses were outlined by the leaders of Siberian Oblastnichestvo Grigory N. Potanin and Nikolay M. Yadrintsev. Their ideas are later given a new meaning in the controversy among the Far Eastern futurists in the early Soviet years. In particular, in the collection “The Siberian Motif in Poetry (From Baldauf to the present day)”, the famous Marxist critic Nikolay F. Chuzhak suggests reconsidering the concept of “couleur locale.” Using the example of Innokentiy V. Fedorov-Omulevsky, whose creative biography was connected both with Siberia and the metropolis, Chuzhak makes references not only to regional literature, but also considers Siberian plots in the works of such artists as Vasily Surikov, Vladimir Vuchichevich, and Grigory Gurkin. In 1923, the Irkutsk art critic Dmitriy A. Boldyrev-Kazarin publishes an article “Sibirica in Art”, which, in fact, argues with Chuzhak's collection. Boldyrev-Kazarin puts forward the idea that it was precisely Chuzhak's ultra-Marxist approach that prevented him from fully understanding the “Sibirica” plot. He highlights the review of the futurist poet Nikolay Aseev “Siberian Tale” on Sergey Tretyakov's poetic cycle “Travel Pass”, created by the poet during his trip from Chita to Moscow. For Boldyrev-Kazarin, Aseev is primarily a poet, therefore “his approach to an exciting topic is based on artistic intuition rather than on exact, scientific analysis.” Tretyakov's poetic cycle, in turn, is a variant of the travelogue, which was mostly developed among futurists; therefore, the text space in his traveling poetic cycle becomes much more significant than another transcription of Siberia. Thus, in the process of formation and development of the “Sibirica” plot, it becomes more obvious, in terms of the frontier category, that European Russia in relation to Siberia is increasingly acquiring the features of a mobile zone of consolidation and development, a zone that is no longer divides as much as it brings together the internal and external spaces of culture.