Two centuries - two versions of the Siberian text: regionalists vs. ''village-prose writers''

In the article the authors present a new approach to the Siberian text of Russian literature, which is analysed in the perspective of the two most prominent intellectual and aesthetic movements produced by the Siberian cultural milieu in the second half of the 19th and in the 20th centuries - the group of Siberian regionalists and the generation of village-prose writers. Despite the traditional apprehensions of the Siberian text as an archetypal motif ensemble rooted in archaic initiation rituals (works by Yu. Lotman and V. Tiupa), the authors of the given article attract attention to the communicative ability of the territorial text as its constitutive part. The shift of the viewpoint, based on the concrete material (see, for instance, Yadrintsev's insults against first Chekhov's travelogue notes from Siberia), led to the widening of the spectrum of questions and problems, which now became accessible for the scholar. The strengthening of the dialogue and ideology influences, which in turn were the results of the fundamental transition from classical to non-classical forms of poetics at the turn of the centuries, articulated the previously unexpressed components in the Siberian text structure, e.g., ethnicity, science, power, history. Having been produced by the communities of writers and journalists these very concepts asserted their influence over dominating at the given time type of the local identity. In the course of analysis a number of basic ideological and mental constructs which indicated similarities and differences between the two major cultural projects of Siberian intelligentsia were revealed. Being observed from the viewpoints of ethnicity, science, history and power, both compared versions of the Siberian text and regional identity demonstrated complex relationships of mutual attraction and distinction. The comparison of intellectual, positivistic, individualistic and modern in the general nature of regionalists' self-consciousness encountered with the peasant-collectivistic ethos entwined with the romantic national sentiment of the village-prose writers allowed to scrutinize different artistic and conceptual "transcriptions" of inherent Siberian social themes, e.g., the aborigines' life, the raw-materials tilt in the economic development, the dialogue with the centre of the state.

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