The authors studied the historical and revolutionary novel’s genre and content specifics on the basis of ethnic (Komi) material. According to the authors in the 1930s this genre evolved at the junction of two intentions - the symbolic “alignment” of the center and the periphery in the USSR, creation of a unified national history, and the ethnic authors’ gravitation towards the ethnographic self-description going back to the early ethnographic essays. The authors analyzed the Russian translation of the final version of VasiliyYukhnin’s novel “Scarlet Band” as the first in its class completed Komi historical and revolutionary novel, which marked the beginning of this tradition.