Ideological" and "artistic" strategies of representation of the Altai Mountains in Russian literature of the 1920s

The starting position of the article is the idea of K. Anisimova that the Russian literary tradition in Siberia is characterised by a feeling that at each new stage of development the regional literature is born anew, and the experience gained over the years before is not considered. This is confirmed by the example of the literary imagination of the Altai Mountains, which survived two literary discoveries by the beginning of the Soviet era: as a geographical image (mountains, opposed to the Russian plains) and as an ethno-social image (Russian Altai, populated by foreigners) in the literature of the last third of the 19th - early 20th century. In the administrative structure of the RSFSR in 1922, the territory acquires the status of the autonomous region of "Oyrat people" - Oyrat. When considering the specifics of the Soviet literary discoveries of Oyrat-Oirot (Gorny Altai), we rely on historical researches of Terry Martin (2001). Oirot is regarded as a model of literary imagination of the "Eastern" national margin of the State, the territory of which experiences all the major social and reforming practices of the Soviet project. In the 1920s, its wild ("primitive") exotics is especially attractive for the capital writers and journalists. This article describes alternative scenarios of literary presentation of the Altai Mountains in the initial stage of the Soviet literary mastering of the region. By example of the polemic of the local party functionary P. Gordiyenko ("Oirot" art and journalistic essay, 1931) with the capital writer P. Nizovoy (the story "Pagans", 1922) and historian L. Mamet ("Oirot" historical essay, 1930) two approaches to the solution of the problem in the context of the Soviet national construction are analysed: mythology of the Nature vs. vulgar sociologism. Books with the same name, written almost at the same time and in the same genre, coincide in factography and ethnography, but differ in the point of view on Oirot as a part of the USSR. A look at Oirot from the outside focuses on the markers of national identity, and an inside look - on its levelling and on the integration of the territory in the country's space. They are opposed by the opinion of the writer who is aware of the specificity of the given phase of literary development - Nizovoy's story. The preface to it by Yu. Eichenwald is the token of indisputable artistic merit of the book which was written basing on the author's personal experience. The article compares assessment of the story by the capital critics and the local party member. The apologetics of the natural, the pantheistic vision of the world of the hero are criticised by Gordienko. The participants of the analysed polemic actively operated the vocabulary of the Soviet discourse, therefore, the collision of ''my" and "other's", "capital" and "peripheral" positions ended with accusations of capital authors in political apathy, "nationalism" and "great-power chauvinism". In the early Soviet imagination of Mountain Altai the second approach prevailed.

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