The reissue of the cult Tomsk novel The Tomsk Slums by Non-Krestovsky: opportunities of print and digital versions

The subject of the research in this paper is The Tomsk Slums, a novel by Non-Krestovsky (V.V. Kuritsyn), published in Tomsk at the beginning of the 20th century. The book was one of the elements of the Tomsk city folklore of the Soviet times, it passed from hand to hand, was stored in families as one of the attributes of a lost pre-revolutionary life. At the same time readers of The Tomsk Slums never overestimated the artistic significance of the book. By the content it is a classic "adventure novel", "pulp fiction" about the adventures of a group of swindlers in the pre-revolutionary Tomsk and other Siberian cities (Barnaul, Novonikolayevsk). This kind of literature was widespread in Russia in the early 20th century, mainly in the European part. The Tomsk Slums was published in the Tomsk newspaper Sibirskie otgoloski [Siberian echoes] in 1908, the book edition of 1500 copies was published the same year, and then reissued in 1909. In 1908-1910 Sibirskie otgoloski published novels The Man in the Mask and then The Pursuit of Millions (publication not finished), which are a continuation of Tomsk Slums. After the establishment of the Soviet power, the novel fell out of the scope of the official publishing and literary criticism for 80 years. But it continued to exist at the level of folklore and samizdat, was distributed in the form of photocopies and typewritten reprints. In 1990, Krasnoe znamya, a Tomsk publishing company, reissued the novel in 50 thousand copies. The modern reader can get acquainted with the text of the novel on the site of the largest Russian electronic library Lib.ru, find it in the databases of various electronic bookstores. The new reissue, which is intended by the authors of the article, includes several conceptual aspects. First of all, the reconstruction of the full text of the novel, with the restoration of omissions and verification with the newspaper edition. It is necessary to correct the errors, add the missing chapters, etc. It seems logical to combine all the parts of the novel in one piece, as it appeared at the time of the first publication on the pages of Sibirskie otgoloski, with the preservation of the common name The Tomsk Slums. The alleged republishing requires an extensive scientific commentary and an introductory article, which would present the realities of the pre-revolutionary Tomsk of the early 20th century, the specificity of Sibirskie otgoloski, explain the terms and jargon in the novel, trace the connection of The Tomsk Slums by Non-Krestovsky with Petersburg Slums by Krestovsky. In the new edition special attention will be paid to illustrating the text, and it can be done on the basis of the existing pre-revolutionary images of Tomsk. The digital version also gives an opportunity to make an interactive map of the characters' movements around Tomsk, Barnaul, Novosibirsk, both pre-revolutionary and modern, as well as to create an adventure game based on The Tomsk Slums.

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