"Are we familiar with tiny piece of land, that we live on?": motherland studies textbook by M. V. Zagoskin (1870)

The article is based on the conducted discourse analysis of one of the first motherland studies textbook in Russian Empire written by the resident of Irkutsk M. V. Zagoskin in 1870. The historical, ideological and biographical context of its creation is revealed, the image of the author is characterized. It is found that the textbook was composed on the basis of the textbooks written in the second half of 19th century, epistolary and journalistic heritage of the regionalists, and diverse texts of Zagoskin. The writing was a logical continuation of his pedagogical, research, literary (including journalistic) work and it was aimed at the formation of regional patriotism. The textbook was innovative and ahead of time in many aspects. First of all, in contrast to draft textbook by Potanin and most of the other educational texts on the motherland studies in the second half of 19th century, it was addressed primarily to schoolchildren rather that teachers; it was written in a simple and understandable language. As a practicing teacher who was aware of the age features of his readers, Zagoskin sought to take them into account, while considerable part of the authors of similar textbooks perceived children to be small adults with narrower outlook. Secondly, this work can be called a schoolbook in the sense of educational literature genre typical for the period under study in general but untypical for motherland textbooks of the time. Textbook by M. V. Zagoskin was the first textbook of regional studies in Siberia, and one of the first in the Russian Empire. It is a didactic and ideological project, the aim of which was not only to introduce students to the basics of geography, biology, history, ethnography, statistics and demography of the native city, village and province, but also to form an active respect for the native place, desire to make it a prosperous part of the world; and in the furtherance of this goal, the author combined the plots of the past, present and future of the “small homeland” in the text.