The image of Siberia in the memoirs of the Decembrists
Authors:   Tomsk State University, Mikhaylenko Kristina A. 
Published: December 2024

The article analyzes the documentary and artistic image of Siberia created in the memoir text. The aim of the study is to comprehend the specifics of the representations of the image of Siberia in the memoirs of exiled Decembrists and their wives, due to the individually authorial nature of its reception, and the originality of the imagological reception of the Siberian territory as a “foreign” land, developed “involuntarily”, common to all Decembrist memories. This demonstrates the transformation of the paradigm of the myth of the region among the progressive representatives of the Russian nobility of the early 19th century, striving to find ways to develop Russia. Actualizing the question of the image of Siberia, the specifics of the processes of its mythologization and demythologization, the alienation and at the same time appropriation of the “Siberian alien” characterizing the Decembrist strategies of its creation, the author of the article for the first time pose a problem in connection with the genre nature of memoir studies and its features realized in the memoirs of the “involuntary settlers” (the Decembrists and their wives) based on the material of tNotes of a Decembrist by A.E. Rosen, Notes of Nikolai Vasilyevich Basargin, memoirs of M.A. Bestuzhev, Notes of Princess Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya, and Memoirs of Polina Annenkova. Thus, for the first time, a comprehensive approach is proposed to the analysis of the problem and the material, comprehended in several aspects: genre, imagological, mythopoeic, cultural, and historical. In the course of the research, the author comes to the following conclusions. The image of Siberia in the memoirs of the exiled Decembrists was constructed through initial knowledge (myths about the territory); new data obtained on the way to Siberia; personal observations, experiences, reflection on this matter; meaningful and revised experience, distanced from exile in the process of writing memoirs from memory. The analysis of the memoirs of the Decembrists shows how a new myth about Siberia is born in them — the “holy” land (instead of the “lost” land), introducing eternal values into the memoir narrative: nature, harmony, freedom, creation, God. The myth of Siberians as “wild foreigners and unbridled exiles” living in a “foreign lost country” is also being transformed. In the memoirs, Siberians are represented as free people who have a sense of self-worth, which is an important characteristic for the Decembrist concept of personality. Finally, the memoirs reflect the profound ideological transformation that took place in Siberia of the biographical authors themselves, their narrator heroes, who also act as authors. Foucault’s idea of the heterotopy of space, which is the basis for the analysis, allows seeing that Siberia is perceived in the Decembrist memoirs as a space in space, as a special place in Russia, where a person’s attitude to oneself and the world is changing – from a myth to an individual, personally perceived and therefore real and at the same time imaginary, and mythopoeic image.