"The present": failed experience of the Siberian avant-garde

The article develops some statements, described in the innovative article of E. V. Kapinos «Literature» and «fact» in the Novosibirsk magazine «The Present (1928-1930)». In that article, the author managed to present the magazine as a common text, connected by unity of topics, motives, and method of material submission. At the same time, some topics and motives, specified by the explorer, assume further development. Particularly, problems of discourse strategy of the magazine, methods of the battle of journalists and publicists with psychological fiction, which includes artistic fiction and polemics with existing forms of theatrical art are described in this article. Having as example essays of A. Course «In the foreign house», E. Lynch «Lyrical fishers», the author shows, how, appealing to the main thesis of «Left Art Front» - «literature of the fact», the authors also used fiction, appealing, to be honest, not to poetics principals, but the basis of rhetorics. The larger extent of rhetorics of discourse allowed to actively enter to ideology problems, passing fundamental aesthetic categories. Together with critical comprehension of the art of the main enemy of «The Present» - Sergey Esenin, in the space of the prose arts of M. Gorkiy, M. Sholokhov, V. Ivanov and others have become objects of critics. Herewith, authors of published materials claimed, that exactly «fictitiousness» of literature includes abilities of ideological diversion. Special annoyance of such publicists of «The Present» as A. Course, I. Elst, B. Reznikov has been evoked by theatrical art, especially opera and ballet. Authors directly declared, that activity of theatres, beginning with the «Sibgosopera» and concluding by «Grand Theatre», directed to young part of the proletariat. Generally, summarizing results of publicists activity, we need to say, that, inventing the project of the Siberian literature, its creators had two goals - to eliminate traditional forms of art and simultaneously to involve wide groups of people into the process of art. They successfully managed the first goal, but the second was completely unrealized. The unpreparedness of semi-literate proletariat to representing samples of the led to the internal crisis of «The Present». The coincidence of the internal crisis with coming up of Stalin's totalitarianism in the area of art led to the closing of the magazine in the January of 1930.