Written monuments of historical and cultural heritage of Yakutia: problems of preservation and interpretation

Pavlova-Borisova Tat'yana Vladimirovna PhD in Art History Associate Professor, Department of Culturology, Ammosov North-Eastern Federal University 677000, Russia, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Yakutsk, Kulakovsky str., 42 pavlovaborisova@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Borisov Andrian Afanas'evich ORCID: 0000-0002-8285-6421 Doctor of History Senior researcher, Institite of Humanities and problems of indigenous peoples of North SB RAS 677000, Russia, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) region, Yakutsk, 202 microdistrict, 8, sq. 6 a_a_borisov@mail.ru

In the modern practice of preserving and interpreting historical and cultural heritage, monuments of written culture occupy a large place, which reflect the activities of representatives of the ethnic group in various spheres of their life. First of all, those of them that carry a creative and creative beginning are of interest - chronicles and chronicles, official documents of national importance, notes of travelers, works of outstanding figures of science, culture and art, which are stored in handwritten form in archives and repositories.

If the monuments of written culture of peoples and regions where the written tradition dates back many centuries - in the countries of East, South Asia and West Asia, Europe – have now been studied with varying degrees of completeness, then the written monuments of the peoples of Asian Russia, namely the Yakuts, are waiting for their researchers.

The first written sources about the way of life of the Yakut people appeared in the XVII century. - with the beginning of colonization of this territory by the Russian state. Russian Russian civil servants and officials' first contacts with the Yakuts and other peoples of the region were reflected in them - the decrees of the tsars, petitions and letters of commendation of the Yasach people were written in Russian cursive, which in itself is of paleographic value.

In particular, the information attested in them about the cultural peculiarities of the Yakuts is truly unique and priceless. The first steps of the Yakut script – during the XIX – first half of the XX centuries. several variants of the Yakut alphabet were created - are of great importance, enriching the world's ethno-cultural diversity.

No less important are the monuments of the written tradition, which recorded the achievements of the culture and art of the peoples of Yakutia during the XX century, in particular its first half, which accounted for the main milestones of historical and cultural transformations – it was in the designated historical period that the final transition of the Yakuts to written culture took place.

The problems of preserving the historical and cultural heritage of this region, which are still little known and stored in archives, are still acute. The further the time of their creation is, the more urgent the problem of their interpretation from the standpoint of modern conditions becomes.

If we consider the existing experience in this area, we should start with the publication of documents of the XVII century on the annexation and colonization of the region ^[17].  In the early period of historiography, the major publications of such documents were "Historical Acts" and "Additions to Historical Acts", which were published by the Archeographic Commission during the 1840s - 1870s. Some of them published Yakut acts, but mostly they were documents showing the state's policy on the accession and development of Northeast Asia ^{[1; 2]}. Only some publications published documents illustrating the history and culture of the indigenous inhabitants of Yakutia. For example, these are "The debauched speeches of the son of the boyar soldier Shakhov about the Vilyui River and the Yakuts and Tunguses roaming along it" from July 21, 1641 ^{[7, p.254]}.

Debauched speeches of a serving man Mikhail Stadukhin about the Kolyma and Chukhche rivers, about foreigners living on them and about an unknown island in the Arctic Ocean, near the mouth of the Kolyma River, April 22, 1647 ^{[8, pp. 99-102]}. In Yakutia, for the first time in 1916, a substantial first collection of act documents was published ^[26].

In the Soviet period, the initiatives of the early period were successfully continued, two large collections were published "The colonial policy of the Moscow state in Yakutia of the XVII century" and "Materials on the history of Yakutia of the XVII century (documents of the yasach collection)" ^{[19; 22]}. They also mainly reflected the previous trend - to show the movement of the Russian state to Yakutia, the nature and methods of the process, in particular, through the development of the yasach system. Although, in the first edition, some court cases of the aboriginal population were selected, which reflected local historical and cultural realities.

In the 1960s and 1970s, 4 issues of the collection "Yakut Archive" were published, where separate documents on the history of Yakutia of different periods were published.

In Soviet times, many archival documents were published reflecting the socialist reconstruction of Yakutia, its achievements, the participation of Yakut people in the most important events of national history, the activities of institutions and prominent personalities ^{[3; 6; 20; 24]}, and in the post–Soviet period - documents dedicated to rethinking the legacy of the Soviet past.

Russian Russian cursive monuments of the XVII-XVIII centuries, in particular, reflecting the entry of Yakutia into the Russian state and the activities of some prominent personalities of that time, were attempted to continue the tradition of publishing monuments of Russian cursive of the XVII-XVIII centuries. ^{[15; 16]}.

The Yakut Archive magazine, which began publishing in the mid-1990s, continued the tradition of the collection of the same name, published in Soviet times. In recent years, a lot of archival materials have been published about outstanding Yakut people: statesmen and public figures, writers, scientists, artists and musicians. Most publications do not have a proper archeographic description, comments, the reader is not prepared for the perception of texts. After all, it is very important, when publishing a document, to convey to readers not only information about the circumstances of the creation of the text, but also to give at least its primary interpretation in the form of comments and a preface. In particular, many of them are a simple collection of documents. If they were statesmen, then, first of all, documents of personal origin or documents of an official nature appeared here. As a rule, these are photo albums.

In 2019, the collection "The History of the Engsieli Valley in Russian documents of the XVII century" was published, where we tried to show the place that the corpus of these documents occupies in the history of not only Yakutia, but also Russia ^[18]. The collection is provided with an appendix, which includes images of published documents that exist in electronic form.

 In 2017, the publication of a 10-volume series of works by the first Yakut composer M.N. Zhirkov (1892-1951), who laid the foundations of professional musical art in Yakutia, began. This fact represents the first experience of publishing in the musical culture of this people a collection of works by a national composer, which had no analogues in the cultural history of this ethnic group before. In the volumes of the series, not only handwritten author's texts are published for the first time, but also comments on them by the compilers, an interpretation of the historical, cultural circumstances of the creation of these monuments of musical culture of Yakutia is given.

In modern conditions, an increasing preference is given to electronic archeography, which has its own characteristics ^[27]. In addition to technological and authorship issues, there is a range of problems associated with the fact that a copy becomes "an independent product, a separate material entity (in fact, a "new" historical source)" ^[27]. Considering that we are talking about young written cultures, which include the Yakut one, the task is to create a database consisting of the products of intellectual activity of a particular region.

The purpose of the article is to summarize the experience in the preservation and interpretation of written monuments of historical and cultural heritage of Yakutia and to give recommendations for further work in this field of knowledge.

The study is conducted on two examples. The first one is related to the publication of Russian documents of the XVII century on the history of Yakutia. Most cursive documents of the XVII–XVIII centuries on the history of Yakutia are kept in the archives of Moscow (the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts –RGADA) and St. Petersburg (the Scientific and Historical Archive of the St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences – NIA SPBI RAS). So far, it is difficult for the Yakut user to work with them due to the remoteness, as well as the existing problems with their transliteration. It is gratifying that in Yakut historiography and source studies there is some experience in systematizing the fund of Russian cursive sources of the XVII century about Yakutia ^[17]. In this regard, the role of creating copies of these documents and publishing them is increasing. Yakut archivists, together with colleagues from the RGADA, are working on publishing a catalog of inventories of the Yakut command hut (fund 1177). Three volumes have been published. This makes it much easier to search for and further publish documents. In addition, which is very important, the staff of the NIA SPBI RAS, together with other St. Petersburg researchers, have been creating an electronic scientific catalog from the stock materials of their archive for a number of years.  It is gratifying that some documents from the Yakut Voivodeship hut (fund 160) have already been published in this way. For example, "The ordained memory of the voivodes P.P. Golovin and M.B. Glebov in 1642" ^[23].

The second example is related to the handwritten legacy of the first Yakut composer M.N. Zhirkov, which is kept by the National Library of the RS (Ya) and the National Archive of the RS (Ya). The problem lies in the fact that many valuable materials, including manuscripts of the composer's compositions, remain unclaimed by wide circles of the musical community. The musical heritage of this composer "fell out" of the musical and cultural context. A narrow circle of specialists knew about them. They were not introduced into wide cultural circulation, for example, like his operatic compositions created in fruitful creative collaboration with Professor of the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory G.I. Litinsky - such as the opera "Sygyy Kyrynaastyyr" based on historical legends about the era of internecine wars of the Yakut clans Kyrgyz uyete, which is the first experience of embodiment the ritual and ritual practice of the Yakut people on the opera stage, as well as the first Yakut opera-olonkho "Nyurgun Bootur", composed on the basis of processing  the Yakut heroic epic – until now , only its 1983 edition was known . (Moscow. "Soviet Composer") in Russian - a classic work of professional musical art of the Yakuts was staged on the stage of the D.K. Sivtsev-Suorun Omolloon State Opera and Ballet Theater of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) based on manuscripts and was first published in the original language in 2020 as volume II of the collected works of M.N.Zhirkov, processing Yakut folk songs performed by M.N. Zhirkov and the Moscow composer G.G. Lobachev, included in the first volume of the collected works, were not performed, did not sound from the stage, were not used in concert and pedagogical practice of musical universities and colleges of the republic, although they contain a valuable melodic fund of Yakut song styles of dyeretia and degeren yrya, on recorded folklore other composers did not create chamber vocal and instrumental arrangements. In the course of the study, comparative-historical, cultural-historical diachronic, typological methods, methods of holistic analysis of musical works were used – consideration of structural features, means of artistic expression, musical style, semantics of embodied ideas and images. All written monuments reflecting history, culture, art  Yakutia is equally significant, and forms part of the historical and cultural heritage of this region. Therefore, similar methods were used in relation to the above-mentioned documentary materials. In particular, the text was reconstructed taking into account all available materials related to the conditions for the creation of the text. Previously published similar texts were compared for completeness of reproduction.

The collection of documents published by us includes 30 documents reflecting the history of the Namsk Yakuts during the period of Yakutia's accession to the Russian state. Firstly, the images of documents were scanned and created qualitatively. Secondly, transliteration of texts has been carried out in compliance with the existing rules. Thirdly, comments and a preface to the texts have been written. Difficulties in the work were associated with both technical and substantive aspects. Many texts are either poorly preserved or written with complex writing techniques. Also in some of them there were local peculiarities of writing. Such work was carried out for the first time in recent decades. It is important that the best domestic traditions in the publication of Russian written monuments of the XVII century are not lost.

The published documents are grouped into three sections: I. Public relations (17 documents); II. Yakut (Lena) prison (8 documents); III. Regional policy of the Russian state and the Yakut ulus elite (5 documents). The first section contains a variety of materials: the census of voivode Peter Golovin in Namskaya volost in 1642, the report of the son of the boyar Vasily Poyarkov about the campaign in the Betyunskaya volost in 1642, the court cases of the Yakuts. Familiarity with such documents allows us to consider historical events "from the inside", i.e. they set out the views of the direct participants in the events. Such a written look, thanks to new information technologies, becomes accessible to a wide reader-user. In the second section, the petitions of the service people of the Yakut prison, the data of the voivodeship investigation about the events of 1642 are published, and first of all, we are talking about the time when this fortress, the predecessor of the modern city of Yakutsk, was moved south to the Tuimaada valley. Of interest is the fact that the transfer of the prison to a new location was gradual. Despite the fact that since then the administrative center of Yakutia has moved south, in the old place, some outbuildings, in particular warehouses, remained in the Old prison for some time. Thus, important objects were still preserved here. This changes our ideas about the early stages of the existence of the capital of Yakutia. The third section presents petitions of Yakuts about yasak and the award of Yakut princes for service. All these documents are very interesting and valuable for understanding the historical events of the XVII century in Yakutia. The modern reader has the opportunity to directly get an idea of the social system of the Yakuts of that time. In addition, recorded from the words of Yakuts and Russian military men of the Yakut garrison, they are indirect monuments of the social and political consciousness of the local population. Translated into modern media, these documents have become the property not only of narrow specialists, but of the general population, and can be used in the educational process.

We also published one of the important texts – a petition with the track record of the Nam Prince Tyusyuk Mymakov between 1682-1689. addressed to co-rulers Ivan and Peter Alekseevich and Tsarevna Sophia Alekseevna ^[5]. Such sources are important, first of all, because they are compiled on behalf of representatives of the Yakut population. They talk about the attitude of representatives of the Yakut elite to the royal service. This is their historical and cultural value, since they are monuments of the social and political thought of the Yakuts of the XVII century.

The most important wish is that in the future the work should be carried out in a brigade way, as it was carried out in those two major publications of the Soviet era, since all stages of the work are very time-consuming, require special care and preparation. Despite the difficulties that have taken place, a significant contribution has been made to the formation of new sources reflecting the historical and cultural heritage of the Yakut people.

Another example relates to the publication of documents related to the relatively recent history of the region – the life and work of the first Yakut composer M.N. Zhirkov. The problem is that most of the materials of the composer's creative heritage were not published and were in handwritten form: notes and texts of musical works, comments on them, articles and essays. They are kept in the collections of the National Library of the RS (Ya) and the National Archive of the RS (Ya). The materials available so far have been limited to individual editions mainly of the mid-twentieth century. ^{[9; 13; 28]}. Collections are in high demand in performing practice. The publication of the manuscript of the study "Yakut folk music" by M.N. Zhirkov in 1981 was an event of the Yakut musical science. At the same time, there was a problem not only with perpetuating the memory of the outstanding composer, but also with the interpretation of his historical and cultural heritage taking into account the modern requirements of science.

During these years, the publication of the 10-volume series "Collected Works" by M.N. Zhirkov has been systematically carried out. At the moment, they have already been published: Volume I. 1st part - "Songs for voice and piano", Volume II - "Nyurgun Bootur: (opera in 4 acts, 6 paintings): klavir", volume IV - "Sygy Kyrynaastyyr: klavir (libretto by I. Izbekov-Uustaakh, I. Vinokurov-Chagylgan", Volume IX - study "Yakut folk music" ^{[10; 11; 12]}. In addition, the photo album "Mark Nikolaevich Zhirkov: documents, photographs" was published ^[21]. In the collections considered in this article, the materials are arranged so that the user can not just read them, but also apply them for professional purposes – performing, teaching, lecture, educational practice.

The compositions included in the already published volumes of the series, which became the basis of the Yakut professional musical art, masterpieces of the golden fund of Yakut culture, but were not available to the general reader, existed mainly in handwritten form. Firstly, these are Yakut songs, most of which are folk. For the first time, the publication of these songs is accompanied by comments that reveal the conditions in which these samples of vocal music were created and recorded in writing. The peculiarities of certain songs are explained in terms of their content and musical features. Secondly, the claviers of the composer's outstanding works – operas - were published, which marked the beginning of the emergence of this genre in the history of the Yakut professional musical culture. And for the first time it was carried out in full with the preservation of the original author's idea. The prefaces to these publications describe the historical and cultural significance of the published works of the Yakut composer, the characteristic features of the creative process of their creation. Digitization of these unique notations contributed to the fact that these musical works became the property of not only the Yakut, but also domestic and world users.

The published written monuments of the historical and cultural heritage of Yakutia of different years over time, as their quantitative increase, should form a solid corpus of materials covering the cultural development of the region. The process of transferring information to modern media plays an important role in this. It is especially important for the organization of the educational process. Digitized texts are much more convenient and you can work more quickly. In particular, we are talking about cursive texts of the XVII century. In our publication, a considerable place is occupied by the created image of primary sources, which is transferred to paper in the form of a printed publication – a collection of articles, and there is also an electronic form. In the educational process associated with the recognition of the proposed texts by students, teaching them how to use these written monuments in their future profession, the collections considered here will play an educational and methodological role as visual aids.

The monuments of the written tradition of Yakutia stored in various archives represent an important part of the historical and cultural heritage of the country. There is a lot of work to be done to identify new written texts of value as monuments of the historical and cultural heritage of Yakutia, which are stored in various archives and require their special storage and interpretation. In addition, over time, they will be published, transferred to new media, taking into account the necessary requirements for the publication of such materials. Russian archeography has accumulated a lot of experience in this area ^{[4; 14; 25]}.

The work on the preservation and interpretation of written monuments of the historical and cultural heritage of Yakutia includes such an important form as publication activity. This work at the present stage requires more attention to the quality of translation into a new medium, as well as to the quality of translation into a modern language.

We are working in this direction, we have accumulated some experience, with which we share in this article. First of all, it concerns the nature of working with texts. Maximum correctness is required when reproducing these texts, especially on modern media. It is important not only to make high-quality copies, but also to provide them with accompanying data explaining their origin, conditions of occurrence, features of the content, etc.

The research summarized the experience of publishing historical and cultural heritage monuments on the example of Russian cursive documents of the XVII century about Yakutia, as well as the works of the first Yakut composer M.N. Zhirkov. Since they are of great value as samples of archival documents reflecting regional specifics, we have carried out work to determine their significance for the culture of Yakutia.

In special introductory articles and comments to the published documents, the historical conditions of the creation of these monuments were revealed, their content was assessed for the field of knowledge in which they are most in demand. The nature of the publications carried out by us in comparison with previous similar publications allows us to say that new forms of sources on the historical and cultural heritage of Yakutia have been created. In this article, based on an assessment of the internal content of the collections considered as examples and the quality of their publication, recommendations have been developed to improve further work in this direction. Undoubtedly, further work should be continued to identify such written monuments that require special storage and interpretation, which are of great value to the Yakut people, as well as transferring this information to modern media, taking into account the necessary publication rules.

The question of creating a pan-Yakut electronic database of written monuments of historical and cultural heritage of Yakutia has been raised.