Leonid Borodin: to the problem of creative individuality

In the article, L.I. Borodin’s novel The Third Truth is considered against the background of disputes about the historical fate, culture and literature of Siberia in the second half of the twentieth century. The author attempts a holistic reading of The Third Truth using current methods of mythopoetic analysis. Attention is focused on the meaning of the name, on the key artistic concepts and the character series Ryabinin - Selivanov - the Obolenskiye. The poetics of the names of key characters and the artistic space that belongs to them are studied in detail. The basic concept is called the taiga, which is ontologically important for Siberian writers, and allows them to convey a characteristic attitude to nature. In the associative field of the concept, words with axiological semantics are identified. The author comes to the following conclusions: L. Borodin managed to fix the approaching end of the heroic stage of national history in the relationships of key characters; he managed to show in Selivanov’s fate the reflection of the tragedy of the new “urban” reality, which suppresses national and historical instincts and deforms the axiological foundations of existence; the place of this story in the literary biography of L. Borodin is determined by the uniqueness of the created aesthetic reality that corresponds to the idea of traditional artistic systems, but most importantly - the scale and nature of generalizations that characterize the modern civilizational choice.