Siberia in the biography and literary works of V.A. Obruchev

The paper gives an overview of the Siberian episodes of the biography of the famous scientist and writer Vladimir A. Obruchev. From 1888 to 1912, he lived and worked in different cities, including Tomsk, for a long time three times. In the summer of 1888, Obruchev, a graduate of the Mining Institute in St. Petersburg, after completing his studies in Central Asia, was appointed a full-time geologist at the Irkutsk Mining Administration and arrived in Siberia for the first time. His letters can be read as a biographical text related to life in Irkutsk in 1888-1892, with studies of gold-bearing regions along the banks of the Lena, with work in the East-Siberian branch of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. At the same time, they can be perceived as a regional text about Siberia, about its nature, geographical and climatic features, and about various peoples. In his second visit to Irkutsk, Obruchev spent four years, from 1895 to 1898, there. He studied the geological structure of Western Transbaikalia in connection with the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway. For the third time, Obruchev was in Siberia from 1901 to 1912, and this period is connected with Tomsk, where the scientist headed the Geology Department of the newly established Institute of Technology. The literary works created by Obruchev at this time and printed in metropolitan and regional periodicals are analysed. While still a student, he wrote a story called "The Sea is Noisy", which was first published in two issues of the St. Petersburg newspaper Syn Otechestva in 1887. While living in Tomsk, Obruchev again turned to literary experiments. He began to cooperate with Sibirskaya Zhizn', a newspaper founded by P.I. Makushin. Obruchev had a number of his political feuilletons published in it. In the archives of the Obruchev family, there is a story "On the Pillars", which tells about Obruchev's Krasnoyarsk impressions, and represents a historical and psychological story about young love, and how it is tested by the tragic upheavals of the revolutionary underground movement. In the story, Siberia is represented as a specific geographical, natural, historical, social and cultural space. At the same time, the ethical component in this universal description is significant in the story, for it makes it possible to perceive it as a topos associated with the existential choice of a person and with responsibility for this choice. Obruchev's idea of his science fiction novels Plutonia and Sannikov Land is analysed. In these novels, Siberia and its Far North are presented as a little-studied territory. The author dwells on the description of the geography and climate of Northern Siberia, the coast of the Chukotka Peninsula, the Bering Sea, the Beaufort Sea and islands located in the Arctic Ocean. At the same time, the writer perceives this region as a kind of future economic "reserve" of the humankind.

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