TYUMEN LITERARY PROCESS IN THE 1980s

The author makes an attempt to analyse the "Golden age" of Tyumen rock samizdat in the context of Tyumen literary process of the 1980s, a period that witnessed the establishment of Tyumen Writers' Regional Organisation along with the city's regional literary identity. The author considers writers' organisations, publishing houses, and literary journals of the period in question, and samizdat journals (generally represented by rock samizdat in the region) as an alternative to official culture. In this study, the history of rock samizdat of the 1980s includes such journals as Problemi otolaringologii [Issues of Otolaryngology], Sibirskaya yazva [Anthrax], Anarhiya [Anarchy], and others. The author also maintains that among the most important and valuable study materials are the archival materials of protocols and reviews of the Tyumen Writers' Regional Organisation taken from the State Archive of Socio-Political History of Tyumen Region. Not only do the archival materials illustrate the history of Tyumen Writers' Regional Organisation, but help look at unofficial literature through the prism of official literature (M. Fedoseenkov's review of K. Ryb'yakov's, I. Zhevtun's, R. Neumoev's, and M. Nemirov's lyrics). Among the main conclusions of the article, the author highlights the fact that samizdat publishers created a special environment opposed to official culture, which formed not only its own reader, but also its own researcher. According to the author, rock samizdat publishers' mythmaking is expressed primarily in the leveling of the category of the author (as opposed to official literature, in which authors tend to make a name for themselves as a rule). In addition, the author proves that for the representatives of Tyumen underground samizdat is not a necessary form of existence, but a form of organic content.