The documentary basis of Ne-Krestovsky's newspaper adventure novels

In the article features of adventurous novels of the well-known Tomsk writer of the beginning of the 20th century Kuritsyn, who published his works under the pseudonym "Ne-Krestovsky", are analysed. The author considers the stages of the writer's creative career, the place of adventure novels in his work, his attitude to the works of his contemporaries. The "documentality" of the adventurous novels is analysed in several aspects. Firstly, the level of the unfolding of a novel plot in recognisable urban spaces, against the background of real institutions, places and streets is considered. The writer not only relied on his own life experience gained during his service in the gold mines, work on the Siberian Railway, but he also stressed that he used facts Tomsk people knew in the novels. This made his works reliable and accurate, although it is not possible to find the criminal facts mentioned in the novel in the newspaper chronicle of Tomsk: not so much because of the amount of material to be investigated, but because of the lack of "chronological fixation" of criminal offences. There is no indication that Kuritsyn used the events of recent times - he could quite rely on criminal "urban legends", long-standing criminal cases. On the other hand, real Tomsk crimes - like the crimes described in Kuritsyn's adventurous novels - were quite similar: attacks, robberies, murders, card cheating in underground "gambling houses", etc. Any crime in Tomsk could become the basis for constructing a novel plot, especially since it inevitably transformed in the artistic space of the novel. Secondly, Kuritsyn drew knowledge about the criminal world of the pre-revolutionary Tomsk from his own sources, thanks to friendly relations with his publisher, lawyer V.A. Dolgorukov, and his relative P.P. Arshaulov. This was reflected in the detailed descriptions of the "criminal schemes" of the crimes described, in the knowledge (and explanation for the readers) of the specific terms, the criminal jargon the characters of the novels used. The publication of Ne-Krestovsky's adventure novels in the newspaper Sibirskie otgoloski [Siberian Echoes] led to the fact that readers of the beginning of the 20th century perceived them in the context of the entire periodical; the novels were "inscribed" in the general problems of Russian provincial life. The articles and satirical articles of Sibirskie otgoloski raised issues of the complex criminal situation in Tomsk; female prostitution was condemned; a constant theme for journalists' reflection was the state of affairs in the gold industry, etc. The same problems were also present in the adventurous novels, which gave them an additional "documentary" character. It is concluded that it is the "documentality" of the adventurous novels of Kuritsyn that became the "key" to their enduring reader success.

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