HISTORICAL AND REVOLUTIONARY NOVEL IN THE KOMI LITERATURE OF THE 1930-1950 AS THE FRUIT OF COMPROMISE
The authors studied the historical and revolutionary novel's genre and content specifics on the basis of ethnic (Komi) material. According to the authors in the 1930s this genre evolved at the junction of two intentions - the symbolic “alignment” of the center and the periphery of the USSR, creation of a unified national history, and the ethnic authors' gravitation towards the ethnographic self-description going back to the early ethnographic essays. The authors analyzed the Russian translation of the final version of Vasily Yukhnin's novel “Scarlet band” as the first in its class completed Komi historical and revolutionary novel, which marked the beginning of this tradition. The ethnographic realism enabled the author to depict the patriarchal way of life without significant departure from the communist party's rhetoric or state didactics. Novels by another Komi author, Ya. Rochev, “Two friends” (1952) and “Izhma unrest” (1959), G. Fedorov's “When the dawn comes” (1956), and some others followed the same pattern demonstrating the existence of a private deal between the government dominated publishing mechanism addressing its own political tasks and the authors, who wished both to see their books in print and tell the truth about the history, traditions and customs of their peoples. Manifestation of this deal was a specific genre of historical and revolutionary novel based on local material.