Spatial Poetics of Nikolai Iadrintsev’s 'Russkaia obshchina v tiur’me i ssylke'

• In Event: Siberian Spatial Poetics

Abstract

One of the leading voices of Siberian Regionalism, Nikolai Mikhailovich Iadrintsev, left a rich body of literature dedicated to the mistreatments to which Siberia was subjected, not least of which was the detrimental effect caused by Imperial Russia’s haphazard exilic practices. As the title of Iadrintsev’s first book-length project — Russkaia obshchina v tiur’me i ssylke (1872) — signals, spatial markers play a central role in his attempt to reconstruct for the imperial readership the image of penal servitude. Physical places such as tiur’ma (prison) and ssylka (exile) are described with painstaking care. This paper argues that Iadrintsev’s interest in the spaces of exile serves a purpose far more significant than mere cataloguing. Rather, coupled with ethnographic depictions of communal activities housed within exilic spaces, the complex spatial poetics become a lucrative channel for discussion of such fraught topics as prison reform, regional administrative rule, national identity, and Russia’s colonial destiny.

Author

• Ani Abrahamyan, Hamilton College