Suddenly it has drawn nearer to us": the image of Siberia in the children magazines of the late XIX - early XX centuries

This article aims to reveal the image of Siberia in the magazines for children in the late 19 - early 20 centuries. We consider the children magazines as a tool of formation of the national identity, one of the sources of the construction of individual and collective ideas about Russian empire and its regions. The article draws upon the popular children magazines, such as "Zadushevnoe slovo" (1876-1917), a weekly illustrated magazine, and "Rodnik" (1882-1917), a monthly magazine. In this article we pay a special attention to the questions of author, audience, context, genre, and content of publications about the Siberian region and its population. We found out and analyzed all articles, notes, letters, illustrations of Siberia, but also all kinds of texts where "Siberia" was mentioned, as well as cities, towns, villages, and the people of the region. We aim to find out who wrote about Siberia, their reasons, and recognize what genres they used to describe Siberia, what topics the editors of the magazines were interested in to publish. We compare the representations of Siberia in the children magazines with the representations of region, which were constructed by the magazines and journals for different audiences. We can conclude that the children magazines began to tell stories about Siberia since the first volumes. However, if "Zadushevnoe slovo" paid attention to the topic of Siberia until the late 1880-s just occasionally, publishing only brief notes or illustrations of the Siberian aborigines, animals, and plants, on the contrast, "Rodnik" published long essays and travelogues. It can be explained by the different format of the magazines, the first one was a weekly magazine, aiming to entertain readers, publishing the very short-life information; the second one was a monthly magazine, publishing novels, articles, travelogues, essays for long and careful reading. The most popular themes included the geographical description of the Siberian region, its climate, the architecture and urban everyday life, and the cultural traditions of the Siberian people. The authors of "Rodnik" (V. Sorokin, A. Osipov) emphasized the common traits of the European Russia and Siberia, though they acknowledged some specific of Siberia as a place of hard labor and exile. On the contrary, the authors of "Zadushevnoe slovo" mostly described the specific of the region, focusing on the wild nature and the exotic culture of the Siberian people. This way of representations of Siberia was quite typical for other popular Russian magazines ("Niva", "Rodina") at that time.

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