Judging “Things as They Really Are”: Dersu Uzala, A. S. Pushkin, L. N. Tolstoy, and Semiotics

JATS XML:

BibTEX:

Research Information Systems Citation Format:

Download:
PDF
Funding Sources:
This work was carried out at Viktor Astafyev Krasnoyarsk State Pedagogical University with financial support from the Russian Science Foundation, project no. 25-18-00071, https://rscf.ru/project/25-18-00071/
For citation:
Anisimov, K. V. “Judging ʽThings as They Really Are’: Dersu Uzala, A. S. Pushkin, L. N. Tolstoy, and Semiotics.” Dva veka russkoi klassiki, vol. 8, no. 3, 2026, pp. 158–195. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22455/2686-7494-2026-8-3-158-195
Abstract:
This article explores the artistic understanding and cultural imagination of a newly acquired region during its territorial integration. In V. K. Arsenyev’s case, this is the southern part of the Russian Far East. The focus is on the dualism characteristic of such historical experience — that of the traveler, symbolizing state power, and the local aborigine. One specific area of analysis is the poetics of communication: Arsenyev demonstrates that his characters speak, name, and think about objects differently. Examined from a semiotic perspective, Dersu Uzala’s communicative strategy reveals a predominance of indexical signs, which imply the interpretation of meaning through indirect signs and traces. The narrator’s expertise, gravitating toward symbolic signs, enabled the author to utilize narrative poetics resources such as metatext, intertext, and equivalence. The effect of the literary “invention” of the region is achieved through the referential linking of the described realities to recognizable artistic forms of 19th-century classics.
Keywords: V. K. Arsenyev, the duology “Across the Ussuri Land,” “Dersu Uzala,” imagination of a region, semiotics, narratology, intertextuality
Author: Kirill V. Anisimov
Information about the author:
Kirill V. Anisimov, DSc in Philology, Professor, Viktor Astafyev Krasnoyarsk State Pedagogical University, Ada Lebedeva St., 49, 660049 Krasnoyarsk, Russia.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.or g/0000-0002-6543-397X

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Received: February 09, 2026
Approved after reviewing: April 11, 2026
Published: September 25, 2026
Issue: 2026 Volume 8 No. 3
Department: Russian Literature of the 18th–19th Centuries
Pages: 158-195
DOI: Visit Website
EDN:
https://elibrary.ru/KHMMOF
UDK: 821.161.1.09"/19"
Publication Type: Research Article

References

Azadovskii, M. K. “V. K. Arsen’ev — puteshestvennik i pisatel’” [“V. K. Arsen’ev — the Traveler and the Writer”]. Azadovskii, M. K. Sibirskie stranitsy: Stat’i, retsenzii, pis’ma [Siberian Pages: Articles, Reviews, Letters]. Irkutsk, East-Siberian Publishing House, 1988, pp. 147–225. (In Russ.)

Akimov, Yu. G. Severnaia Amerika i Sibir’ v kontse XVI — seredine XVIII v.: Ocherki sravnitel’noi istorii kolonizatsii [North America and Siberia in the Late 16th — Mid- 18th Centuries: Essays on the Comparative History of Colonization]. St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg State University Publ., 2010. 372 p. (In Russ.)

Bashliar, G. Izbrannoe: Poetika prostranstva [Selected Works: The Poetics of Space]. Moscow, ROSSPEN Publ., 2004. 376 p. (In Russ.)

Wolff, L. Izobretaia Vostochnuiu Evropu. Karta tsivilizatsii v soznanii epokhi Prosveshcheniia [Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization in the Mind of the Enlightenment]. Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie Publ., 2003. 560 p. (In Russ.)

Guminskii, V. M. Russkaia literatura puteshestvii v mirovom istoriko-kul’turnom kontekste [Russian Travel Literature in the Global Historical and Cultural Context]. Moscow, IWL RAS Publ., 2017. 605 p. (In Russ.)

Dviniatina, T. M. Poeziia I. A. Bunina: Evoliutsiia. Poetika. Tekstologiia [Ivan Bunin’s Poetry: Evolution. Poetics. Textual Criticism: DSc Dissertation]. St. Petersburg, 2015. 441 p. (In Russ.)

Egorchev, I. N. “Zagadki” Dersu Uzala [Dersu Uzala’s Enigmas]. Vladivostok, Far-Eastern Federal University Publ., 2014. 180 p. (In Russ.)

Egorchev, I. N. Neizvestnyi Arsen’ev [The Unknown Arsen’ev]. Vladivostok, Far-Eastern Federal University Publ., 2016. 164 p. (In Russ.)

Zhirar, R. Lozh’ romantizma i pravda romana [The Lies of Romanticism and the Truth of the Novel]. Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie Publ., 2019. 352 p. (In Russ.)

Zholkovskii, A. K. “Zerkalo i zazerkal’e. Lev Tolstoi i Mikhail Zoshchenko” [“Mirror and Beyond the Mirror. Leo Tolstoy and Mikhail Zoshchenko”]. Zholkovskii, A. K. Bluzhdaiushchie sny i drugie raboty [Wandering Dreams and Other Works]. Moscow, Nauka Publ., 1994, pp. 122–138. (In Russ.)

Kozhevnikova, N. A., and Z. Iu. Petrova. Materialy k slovariu metafor i sravnenii russkoi literaturi XIX–XX vv. Vyp. 1: “Ptitsy” [Materials for a Dictionary of Metaphors and Similes of the 19th–20th Centuries Russian Literature. Issue 1: “Birds”]. Moscow, Iazyki russkoi kul’tury Publ., 2000. 480 p. (In Russ.)

Korovashko, A. V. Po sledam Dersu Uzala. Tropami Ussuriiskogo kraia [Tracing Dersu Uzala. Along the Paths of Ussuri Land]. Moscow, Veche Publ., 2016. 256 p. (In Russ.)

Kuz’michev, I. Pisatel’ Arsen’ev. Lichnost’ i knigi [Arsen’ev as a Writer: His Personality and Books]. Leningrad, Sovetskii Pisatel’ Publ., 1977. 237 p. (In Russ.)

Lebedev, A. V. Logos Geraklita. Rekonstruktsiia mysli i slova [The Logos of Heraclitus: Reconstruction of Thought and Word]. St. Petersburg, Nauka Publ., 2014. 533 p. (In Russ.)

Lotman, Iu. M., and B. A. Uspenskii. “Mif — imia — kul’tura” [“Myth — Name — Culture”]. Tartu State University Bulletin, vol. 308, Works on Semiotics, vol. 6. Tartu, 1973, pp. 282–303. (In Russ.)

Lotman, Iu. M. “ʽPikovaia dama’ i tema kart i kartochnoi igry v russkoi literature nachala XIX veka” [“ʽThe Queen of Spades’ and the Theme of Cards and Card Games in Early 19th-Century Russian Literature”]. Lotman, Iu. M. Izbrannye stat’i: v 3 t. [Selected Articles: in 3 vols.], vol. 2. Tallin, Aleksandra Publ., 1992, pp. 389–415. (In Russ.)

Mikhailin, V. Iu. “Vsesoiuznyi tuzemets: chukcha v anekdote i kino” [“The All-Union Aborigine: The Chukchi in Anecdote and Cinema”]. Imagologiia i komparativistika, no. 2, 2016, pp. 146–154. (In Russ.)

Nagina, K. A. Metel’nye prostranstva russkoi literatury (XIX — nachalo XX veka) [Snowstorm Spaces of Russian Literature (19th — Early 20th Centuries)]. Voronezh, “NAUKA-IuNIPRESS” Publ., 2011. 129 p. (In Russ.)

Paperno, I. “Kto, chto ia?”: Tolstoi v svoikh dnevnikakh, pis’makh, vospominaniiakh, traktatakh [“Who, What Am I?”: Tolstoy in His Diaries, Letters, Memoirs, and Treatises]. Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie Publ., 2018. 232 p. (In Russ.)

Paperno, I. “Pushkin v zhizni cheloveka Serebrianogo veka” [“Pushkin in Life of a Silver Age Person”]. Cultural Mythologies of Russian Modernism. From the Golden Age to the Silver Age. Berkley, LA, Oxford, University of California Press, 1992, pp. 19–51. (In Russ.)

Perekhval’skaia, E. V. Russkie pidzhiny [Russian Pidgins]. St. Petersburg, Aleteiia Publ., 2008. 363 p. (In Russ.)

Pirs, Ch. S. Izbrannye filosofskie proizvedeniia [Selected Philosophical Works]. Moscow, Logos Publ., 2000. 412 p. (In Russ.)

Plotnikova, N. I. V. K. Arsen’ev: tvorcheskaya individual’nost’ pisatelia. Zhanrovoe svoeobrazie prozy [V. K. Arsen’ev: The Creative Individuality of a Writer. The Genre Originality of His Prose: PhD Dissertation]. Vladivostok, 2003. 243 p. (In Russ.)

Said, E. Orientalizm [Orientalism]. Moscow, Muzei sovremennogo iskusstva Garazh Publ., 2021. 560 p. (In Russ.)

Slezkin, Iu. Arkticheskie zerkala: Rossiia i malye narody Severa [Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North]. Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie Publ., 2008. 512 p. (In Russ.)

Tarasova, A. I. Vladimir Klavdievich Arsen’ev [Vladimir Klavdievich Arsenev] Moscow, Nauka Publ., 1985. 344 p. (In Russ.)

Uspenskii, B. A. “Poetika kompozitsii” [“The Poetics of Composition”]. Uspenskii, B. A. Semiotika iskusstva [Semiotics of Art]. Moscow, Iazyki russkoi kul’tury Publ., 1995, pp. 9–218. (In Russ.)

Uspenskii, B. A. “Pushkin i Tolstoi: tema Kavkaza” [“Pushkin and Tolstoy: The Theme of Caucasus”]. Uspenskii, B. A. Istoriko-filologicheskie ocherki [Historical and Philological Essays]. Moscow, Iazyki slavianskoi kul’tury Publ., 2004, pp. 27–48. (In Russ.)

Scheler, M. Resentiment v strukture moralei [Ressentiment in the Structure of Morals]. St. Petersburg, Nauka Publ., 1999. 231 p. (In Russ.)

Shmid, V. Proza kak poeziia. Pushkin, Dostoevskii, Chekhov, avangard [Prose as Poetry: Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and the Avant-Garde]. St. Petersburg, INAPRESS Publ., 1998. 352 p. (In Russ.)

Eikhenbaum, B. M. Lev Tolstoi: issledovaniia. Stat’i [Leo Tolstoy: Researches. Articles]. St. Petersburg, Faculty of Philology and Arts Publ., 2009. 952 p. (In Russ.)

Iakimova, L. P. Mnogonatsional’naia Sibir’ v russkoi sovetskoi literature [Multiethnic Siberia in Russian Soviet Literature]. Novosibirsk, Nauka Publ., 1982. 229 p. (In Russ.)

Iarotskaia, Iu. A. Tvorchestvo V. K. Arsen’eva. Spetsifika nauchno-khudozhestvennoi sistemy [The Work of V. K. Arsen’ev: The Specifics of His Scientific and Artistic System: PhD Dissertation]. Vladivostok, 2005. 187 p. (In Russ.)

Iarotskaia, Iu. A. “Khudozhestvennye osobennosti knigi V. K. Arsen’eva ʽPo Ussuriiskomu kraiu’ (opyt analiza glavy ʽPurga na ozere Khanka’)” [“Artistic Features of V. K. Arsen’ev’s Book ʽAcross the Ussuri Land’ (A Case Study of the Chapter ʽSnowstorm on Lake Khanka’.”]. Smyslovoe prostranstvo teksta [The Semantic Space of the Text], issue 8. Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Vitus Bering Kamchatka State University Publ., 2008, pp. 140–149. (In Russ.)

Iarotskaia, Iu. A. “Priamaia rech’: otrazhenie etnokul’turnoi mental’nosti geroia v tekstakh V. K. Arsen’eva” [“Direct Speech: The Reflection of the Hero’s Ethnocultural Mentality in the Texts by V. K. Arsen’ev”]. Smyslovoe prostranstvo teksta [The Semantic Space of the Text], issue 12. Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Vitus Bering Kamchatka State University Publ., 2013, pp. 56–61. (In Russ.)

Iarotskaia, Iu. A. “Motiv pomoshchi i obrazy pomoshchnikov v tekstakh V. K. Arsen’eva” [“The Motif of Help and Images of Helpers in Texts by V. K. Arsen’ev”]. Oikumena, no. 3, 2017, pp. 65–73. (In Russ.)

Alatas, Syed Hussein. The Myth of the Lazy Native. London: Frank Cass Publ., 1977. 267 p. (In English)

Fairchild, Hoxie Neale. The Noble Savage. A Study in Romantic Naturalism. New York, Columbia Univ. Press, 1928. 535 p. (In English)

Glebov, Sergey. “The Political Ecology of Vladimir Arsen’ev.” Sibirica, vol. 19, no. 3, 2020, pp. 15–36. (In English)

Nichols, Johanna. “Stereotyping Interethnic Communication: The Siberian Native in Soviet Literature.” Between Heaven and Hell: The Myth of Siberia in Russian Culture, ed. by G. Diment and Yu. Slezkine. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1993, pp. 185–214. (In English)

White, Hayden. “The Noble Savage: Theme as Fetish.” White, H. Tropics of Discourse. Essays on Cultural Criticism. Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978, pp. 183–196. (In English)