Article

Name: Plots and Images of Far Eastern History and Culture in Vsevolod Ivanov’s Novel “Blue Sands”

Authors: Elena A. Papkova

A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation

In the section The Plot in Literature and Folklore

Abstract:

This article examines Vsevolod Ivanov’s novel “Blue Sands” from the point of view of the episodes of the history of the Far East and its culture reflected in it. In the images of the three central characters of the novel – Commissar Vasily Zapus, Baron Ungern and Khan Chokan Balikhanov, having real prototypes in the history of the 19th – 20th centuries and created by the writer on the basis of documentary materials – Ivanov primarily emphasizes their great goal – the liberation of his people from external dependence and their unification based on a lofty idea. The analysis of the novel’s characters reveals these goals: for Zapus it is the embodiment of the idea of a world revolution in Red Asia, for Ungern it is the unification of the tribes of the Mongolian root into one Middle state, for Valikhanov – the revival of the Alash Horde – Great Kyrgyzstan. The legend of the blue sands introduced by the writer into the novel, which belongs, according to the classification of the researcher of the people’s utopia K. V. Chistov, to the “legends of the deliverers”, shows that the thoughts of all the heroes of the novel are unfeasible. The answer to the question why large-scale historical rescue projects and bringing people to the land of happiness by a certain hero-deliverer, cannot come true, Ivanov in the novel “Blue Sands” gives, relying on the traditions of folk culture of Siberia and the Far East. The article compares the perception of fortune-telling by sheep’s shoulder blades, common among some peoples of Siberia and the Far East, by the hero of the novel Valikhanov, who studied in St. Petersburg and who does not believe in the meaning of the rite and has lost his sense of homeland, and the lyrical characters of Ivanov’s poem “Zhauryn-Kora”, for whom the rite is part of a common cultural paradigms. The author of the article concludes that the writer in the novel leads the reader to the idea that the loss of a sense of connection with your people, their aspirations and customs embodied in culture, dooms to failure the best thoughts about the salvation of this people.

Keywords: Vsevolod Ivanov, the novel “Blue Sands”, plots of the Far Eastern history, the salvation of the people, the legend of the deliverers, cultural traditions, a sense of homeland

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