Siberian book rarities: Dmitry Korniliev’s "Istoricheskiy Zhurnal"
Authors: Dvortsova Natalya P. ,   University of Tyumen
Published: May 2023

The article considers Dmitry Korniliev’s Istoricheskiy zhurnal, ili Sobranie iz raznykh knig lyubopyt-nykh izvestiy, uveselitel’nykh povestey i anekdotov [Historical magazine, or Collection from various books of curious news, amusing stories and anecdotes] (1790). Over the years of its existence in the history of book culture, the publication has earned a reputation for book rarity (V.S. Sopikov, G.N. Gennadi, V.P. Semennikov). However, modern bibliology has not yet directly answered the question of whether it is a magazine or a book. The “Istoricheskiy zhurnal”, preserved in the Book Museum of the Russian State Library, and a digital copy of the publication from the library of the Tobolsk Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve provided material for the study. The novelty of the research is explained by its original methodological approach to the interpretation of the publication made in the context of the history of media and media transformations suggested by M. McLuhan and F. Barbier, who substantiated the idea of the difference between the book and magazine forms and the types of reading associated with them. Moreover, the integrative research methodology includes the structural-typological, historical-genetic and contextual types of analysis within the framework of bibliology. On the basis of the twofold criterion of the specifics of the magazine form (the mosaicity of its form associated with the phenomenon of collective authorship and fast reading designed for the collective reader), I show the transformation of the book form of I.E. Fisher’s Sibirskaya istoriya s samogo otkrytiya Sibiri do zavoevaniya sey zemli rossiyskim oruzhiem [Siberian history from the very discovery of Siberia to the conquest of this land by Russian weapons] into the Siberian digital mosaic of Korniliev’s “Istoricheskiy zhurnal”. The transformation process of the voluminous and chronically built “Sibirskaya istoriya” into a magazine mosaic of short educational and edifying “news” and moralizing stories is reconstructed. The “Istoricheskiy zhurnal” is studied as part of the formation of the Tobolsk type of a magazine from “Irtysh, prevrashchayushchiysya v Ipokrenu” [The Irtysh, turning into Hippocrene] to “Biblioteka uchenaya” [The scientific library]. The difference between the creative intention and the concept of the “Istoricheskiy zhurnal” in the dedication to A.V. Alyabiev and in the text of the surviving first part of the publication, included in the logic of the formation of the three Tobolsk magazines in their typological features: mosaic structure and educational, moral and entertaining character. I claim that the complex structuralthematic mosaic of the “Istoricheskiy zhurnal” does not correspond to the structural-typological features of the collection. The significance of the “Istoricheskiy zhurnal” as a publication that failed to use all of its potential is primarily explained by the fact that it became the first printed publication in Siberia in which Siberians displayed awareness of their own territorial identity. Owing to the “Istoricheskiy zhurnal”, the processes of transformation of the book and magazine forms in the initial period of the history of book printing are revealed.