Literature is a very important part of the world culture. It can be considered one of the most democratic arts as it finds ways to reflect the most important problems of the society. Reading novels and poems of Russian writers is important for any person who is trying to explore Russian culture.
Siberia is a huge, interesting and diverse region of Russia. Dozens of minority native peoples live in Siberia and the Far East of Russia. For a long time they lived on the vast territory with extreme living conditions - the arctic coast, tundra, taiga, mountain-taiga areas. Living in extreme conditions is an example of flexibility and adaptation of human society.
The original spiritual culture corresponded to the unique experience of the Siberian economic appropriation and was a foundation of the succession for traditions, social relations and ethnic norms.
Peculiar collision of the cultures happened during the development of Siberia. Newly come population from the central part of Russia, exiled or attracted by rich northern resources surpassed aboriginals in number. This had both positive and negative sides. Positive was joining the world civilization, development of education and medical service etc. However traditional culture of aboriginals was damaged. These processes have undoubtedly influenced the culture of the peoples of Siberia and were reflected in many novels of Siberian writers. Reading novels of Siberian writers could be the shortest way to know more about the culture of this huge part of the country.
Sometimes it is said that Siberian literature, being a part of Russian literature, had several typical features.
It is clear that the culture of Siberia, in general, and its literature in particular, is not a separate, closed entity. The ideological and thematic unity of Siberian writers with Russian literature as a whole, however, does not mean they do not have specific, original character. They are just as specific as Siberia itself is specific within the framework of Russia.
It is natural to ask what exactly this originality consist of, how is it displayed, what it actually means.
It should be pointed out that telling about the taiga, the rivers and breathtaking landscapes is not enough for those writing about Siberia. The authors writing about Siberia create personalities with moral and social substance, describe the ‘Siberian’ version of the Russian character.
The major problems reflected in the literature are the problems of man and nature, indigenous peoples and newcomers and low living standards.
Indigenous Literature
Prior to the XIX the population of Siberia generally fell into two categories: aborigines and ‘western’ Russians who came to Siberia as exiles or traders.
The oldest form of the native culture in Siberia was spoken one, i.e. folklore, including the tales of creation, spirits in everyday life, animal tales etc. This native literature is for example collected in The Sun Maiden and the Crescent Moon by James Riordan.
Then since the XVII century Raskolniki (the old believers) started entering Siberia after raskol-split. They didn’t want to accept any innovation of the church ceremonies and harshly confronted the official Orthodox church. Altai raskolniki dreamed to find the Holy Land, they called ‘Belovodie’ (White Waters). The myth of ‘Belovodie’ as of the righteous land in Altai makes an important part of the artistic portrayal of Siberia cultivated in the local folklore and given further development by creations of the local writers.
In addition to the folklore, in several recent decades authors from various indigenous peoples of Siberia have begun to write in the Western manner. Unfortunately, very little of this work which is usually in native languages or in Russian, is available in English.
Chukchi Rytkheu has been writing since 1950, but apart from the short-story collection Stories from Chukotka none of his work has been translated into English, through some of the novels are available in German. The Khanty Yeremei Aipin is the author of the novella “I Listen to the Earth” and several political articles. The short story “About That For Which There Is No Name” by Nenets author Anna Nerkagi in the anthonology “Anxious North” is an allegorical version of the decline and corrupted state of the native people in Siberia.
Among the many other indigenous writers are the Yukagir Semyon Kurilov, the Chukchi poetess Antonina Kymyntai, the Nivkhi novelist Vladimir Sangi, the Mansi poet Yuvan Shestalov and the Nanai historian and the author of a Nanai-Russian dictionary Sulungu Onenko.
Writing in Exile
The emergence of literature in Siberia is sometimes associated with the opening up of the area by the Russians. Tremendous influence was exercised by the «world of outcasts» – the political exiles – on all aspects of Siberian life. They made an unsurpassed contribution to the economic development of the area and even more to the enlightenment, science and culture.
The Orthodox arch-priest Avvakum, one of the first victims of Siberian exile, wrote his Life in which he described the natives of Siberia as barbarians, but occasionally as kind and helpful people.
In the 1850s Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky received a sentence of four years in a Siberian labour camp. He functionalized his experience in the novel “The House of the Dead” which is supposedly the autobiography of a Russian farmer sent to Siberia. In his book, Dostoevsky tells about the need for freedom in the penal system.
About the same time Vladimir Korolenko was exiled to Siberia. Korolenko defended indigenous people in his articles and wrote Siberian stories collected in the “Makar’s Dream”.
The most brutal system of Siberian penal colonies was not instituted until the Stalin’s time when many authors were sent to exile for non-communist behavior. Dmitry Stonov, a friend of writer Korolenko, continued his literary work in the camp, although it was prohibited. He wrote his stories about life in Siberian labour camps that are known as “In the Past Night: The Siberian Stories” on the cigarette paper. Exiled writer Varlam Shalamov spent 16 years in Siberia and wrote his “Kolyma Tales”.
Because of the Nobel Prize received in 1970, Alexander Solzhenitsin’s novel “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is one of the most important novels dedicated to life in Siberian camps. In the novel, the author describes everyday activities of the prisoner of the camp. The other novels of the author are “The First Circle”, “Cancer Ward” and “The Gulag Archipelago”.
Russian Literature on Siberia
Before the revolution, it was still mainly Central Russia that was reflected in Russian literature, while the Urals, the Volga, and Siberia remained virtually outside the old literature’s field of vision. But some Russian writers have made Siberia the topic of their work. Many of these have been translated into English.
After the completion of Trans-Siberian railway, travellers started following the route from Moscow to Vladivostok and Siberia became the topic of many discussions. In 1890, for example, Russian playwright Anton Chekhov decided to investigate the situation on Sakhalin Island and the Sea of Okhotsk, which Russia acquired from Japan in 1875 and turned into colony. He wrote articles to the magazines about his Siberian journey and on the return produced the book “Sakhalin Island” and “From Siberia”.
Perhaps the most famous novel about Siberia is “Doctor Zhivago” by Boris Pasternak, Noble Prize winner in 1958. Pasternak’s hero is sent to Siberia as the physician in the civil wars after the October revolution.
The new Soviet literature began by wiping out «frontier posts» in literary geography. This was accomplished by young writers who had come to literature from different trades - Red Army men, partisans, workers and peasants.
Also around the start of the XX century several scientific expeditions surveyed the country north of Vladivostok. In 1917 Viktor Arseniev, a geographer who participated in the expeditions, wrote a book called “Dersu the Trapper”. He was inspired by his native guide, a member of Siberian Nanai tribe. The fascinating narrative observes flora and fauna and tells about the life of a Siberian native, being a mixture of truth and fantasy. The book was turned into movie, “Dersu Uzala”, in 1976.
Siberian Writers
Valentin Rasputin is perhaps the most prominent contemporary Siberian writer. His novel “Farewell to Matyora” is one if his most impressive works. It follows three generations of Russian peasants living in the island of Matyora in the weeks before destruction of their village by flooding because of a new hydroelectric dam. He tells about life in Russia, it’s nature, death of the village. Among the other novels are “Live and Remember” about a deserter in the WWIII who has to live close to the village where his wife is trying to survive and the only work about Siberia called “Siberia”.
Another Siberian writer, Vil Lipatov, began to publish at the beginning of the 1960s, his first book “Deep Stream”. He immediately attracted attention, because of his fresh views on the world and because of his portrayals of the contemporaries. Attractive in these characters were their early maturity and the fact that they really thought and acted like workers. But the principal feature of Vil Lipatov’s heroes is that work for them is something they feel to be a natural requirement.
Viktor Astafiev, born in Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk in 1924, published the first collection of short stories in 1953 and the first volume of trilogy about a group of Siberian soldiers during WWII “The Cursed and Dead”, in 1992. Today the author is associated with his political activities.
Vasily Shukshin, famous for his novels “Snowball Berry Red” and “Stories from a Siberian Village”, is known by English audience, as many of his novels have been translated into English.
Well-known Russian poet, prose writer and actor, Yevgeny Yevtushenko is also from the Siberian region. He is famous for his narrative poem “Winter Station” which tells the story of a poet’s return to the birthplace.
One of the fascinating portraits in the Russian literature, that of Grandpa Fishka (Finogen Techenin) in the novel “The Strogovs”, was created by Georgi Markov. In “The Strogovs”, the author paints a picture of the working man typical of Siberia.
Agnia Kuznetsova wrote several stories about a young fellow Siberian – “Your Home” and “A Komsomol’s Word of Honor”.
The efforts of young people to find their moral bearings as they come to maturity constitute a central feature of the stories “The Girl” and the “Rowan and Meeting with a Miracle” by Ilya Lavrov, and also We Grew Up by Vadim Ivanov. These and many other works by Siberian writers about the life of our contemporaries were material literary contributions to the arguments and discussions in recent years about the young heroes.
Altai Literature
Altai literature is a comparatively small part of Siberian literature. Altai is the region rich with minerals and natural resources. There had been no places of penal servitude or exiles until the end of the XIX century. Silver, gold and copper mining was taking place as will as precious stones processing and cutting. Labourers in bondage worked very hard, so their dream of freedom became reflected in folklore and literature.
There were no professional writers in Altai for a long time. In the last decades of the XIX Altai was portrayed in essays of writers coming to Siberia to serve or being exiled by the Tsar’s Government.
The local periodical press - newspapers «Zsizn Altaya», a magazine «Sibirskii Rassvet» - appeared here only in the beginning of the XX. The works of the local writers were being regularly published in papers, local critics evaluated Siberian writers’ creations. The most outstanding person was Georgi Grebenschikov, Altai native. He became popular in Russia.
Widely known in Russia are such novels as “The Last of the Udeghe” by Aleksandr Fadeev, “Alitet Goes to the Hills” by Tikhon Semushkin, “Great Nomad Camp”, by Afanasi Koptelov, about the lives of the Altai people in the new conditions of a socialist economy. They were written in the thirties, when collectivization had just reached a height.
From time immemorial Siberia has been inhabited by a multitude of numerically small nationalities, which have attracted the attention not only of explorers and businessmen but also that of Russian writers, the progressive Russian intelligentsia. In their works, Chekhov and Korolenko spoke with indignation and pain of the way these nationalities were oppressed and the cheerless burden of their lives.
Soviet writers, including many Siberian natives, on quite another basis, and in the light of the revolutionary transformations that have taken place, have also turned to the life of these peoples who have been born to new life by the revolution. In doing so they have developed the finest humanist traditions of the classics.
Novels and poems of indigenous Siberian writers are also very interesting as they reflect the life of the minorities ‘from the inside’. Original and distinctive, they provide a different view on the problems of people living in the region. Unfortunately, only few of them are available in English.
Source: International conference "National minorities of northern Asia at the turn of the millenium"
Russian Literature: Introduction and Reading List
Library of Siberian Novels
Russian Literature of Altai Region
Evgeniya Stroganova
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