On Tracks, Facts, and the Living Man. Sergei Tret’iakov’s Implied Ethnographic Turn (or: Appropriating Vladimir Arsen’ev)

Abstract

Sergei Tret’iakov is considered the pioneer of an ethnographic turn within the segment of “factography” in Soviet avant-garde literature. This article re-evaluates this assumption by examining his pieces for Novyi LEF in 1927 and 1928 and his pivotal contributions to the 1929 anthology Literatura fakta (Literature of Fact). The author focuses on Tret’iakov’s appropriation of Vladimir Arsen’ev’s ethnographic writing and devotes special attention to his review of the latter’s V debriakh Ussuriiskogo kraia (In the Wilds of Ussuriland, 1926/1928) – celebrated by Tret’iakov as “one of the most remarkable books in the field of factual prose”. The analysis confronts Tretiakov’s invention and practice of factography with Arsen’ev’s prose and his scriptwriting collaboration on Aleksandr Litvinov’s ethnographic film Lesnye liudi (Forest people, 1928). Whereas Tret’iakov pursues codified signification and a rational approach towards the recording of facts, disregarding “primitive” perception, Arsen’ev emphasises the native’s mimetic ability to perceive and communicate sensual phenomena beyond verbal or analogue codes. Thus, where Tret’iakov aims for a non-hierarchical participatory observation, Arsen’ev, in part, achieves it.