The Mistress of the Mountain, “2017” by Olga Slavnikova

In 2006 Olga Slavnikova published the novel 2017 and at the end of that year she was awarded the prestigious Russian Booker. The date 2017 in the title is a clear reference to Orwell’s well-known novel 1984 suggesting the inclusion into the genre of dystopia. The time when this novel is set is unquestionably meaningful and relates to the ‘celebrations’ of the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution, which turn into a tragic and meaningless bloodshed that in a way makes history go back in a circle. Hence the dystopian character of the novel that combines romance and “fakelore” (Lipovetsky) created by Pavel Bazhov in the 1930s and set in the mines of the Urals. His tales (skazy), with their fantastic creatures, while recalling the trauma Soviet citizens were experiencing at the time, “were both frightening and comforting for Soviet readers” (Lipovetsky). They soon took firm roots in the imagination of the Soviet citizens and is still very much alive in today’s Russia. In this paper we examine how Slavnikova transforms Bazhov’s skazy into a new contemporary myth, starting from the setting in the Urals, which the author renames ‘Riphean Mountains’. She also develops the motif of the “true Riphean mentality” and the “essence of true Ripheanness”, which are embodied by the so-called “rock hounds”. They are not professionals or geologists but explore the mountains in search of precious stones. In this they are similar to some characters of Bazhov’s tales. Krylov and Professor Anfilogov belong to this category. The professor, who is the protagonist of one of the major plots of the novel, after finding a fabulous corundum vein in the North of the Mountain range, dies there as a consequence of deadly pollution. This narrative line introduces the fantastic element with the appearance of the spirits of the Mountains in shapes and ways that deeply differ from the fantastic characters of Bazhov’s mythology. Slavnikova focuses her attention on the transformations of the Mistress of the Mountain, who plays a central role in Bazhov’s tales. She takes the shape and the personality of ordinary women and makes her appearance even in the main city of the region. Krylov’s lover, Tanya and Anfilogov’s wife, Ekaterina Sergeyevna are the same person. They both are hypostases of the Mistress of the Mountain, and they are also linked to other female characters from Bazhov’s tales, as we show in the paper. Another female character, who physically resembles the most conventional representations of the Mistress, is Krylov’s ex-wife, Tamara, a successful businesswoman who owns a very exclusive funeral home. In Slavnikova’s novel the spirits of the Mountain come back to take their avenge on humans creating a messianic and eschatological neo-mythology of the Urals (Abashev).