The semantology of the Chuya highway in Russian literature

The article deals with the issue of the semantology of the Chuya highway in Russian fiction starting with V. Ya. Shishkov's essays and finishing with the song of Garik Sukachov. Along with V. Ya. Shishkov, who determined the paradigm of the description the Chuya highway, V. M. Shukshin is considered to be the genius loci of this road. The Chuya highway plays a significant symbolic and compositional role in his artistic world, it determines the temper of the heroes-drivers. The semantic dominant of the image is the idea of the Chuya highway as a dangerous space, which tests a person for love and death. The metaphorical image of the “Chuya highway as a country” forms a part of the writers' historiosophical models. The road, along with the song and the river, is a model of the world in its holistic contradiction. Space and time happen to tighten on the road and the cultures interpenetrate. The basic features of the road are individually refracted in artistic images, created by various authors of the 20th - early 21st centuries.