The First Newspaper of Novonikolaevsk Narodnaya Letopis' in the Context of Siberian Journalism of the Early Twentieth Century

The article is devoted to the first city public, political, economic and literary newspaper of Novonikolaevsk Narodnaya Letopis' [People's Chronicle] published since 30 March 1906. Like any other provincial newspaper, Narodnaya Letopis' covered foreign, Russian, Siberian and local life. Special attention was paid to the political life of the city, the region and all of Russia, the development of public education and the coverage of events in cultural life. The city owed its appearance and flourishing to the Siberian railway, so the railway was becoming one of the main themes of not only journalistic, but also literary works. Trying to find its place among the Siberian cities, Novonikolaevsk compared itself with its neighbor, the provincial city of Tomsk. The title of the comedy "Who Will Stand in an Unequal Dispute?" indicated that the dispute was unequal. "The noble old" Tomsk was far from the railway, so it had no future, and the young Novonikolaevsk had all the prospects for development, because it stood on the railway. Justifying the name of the literary newspaper, Narodnaya Letopis' gave a significant place on its pages to fiction and literary-critical articles and reviews. Readers' interest was mainly focused on contemporary writers. Most of articles and notes were devoted to Leo Tolstoy and Leonid Andreyev. The choice of authors for publications was largely dependent on their popularity, although some of the newspaper pages were also given to local poets and writers. There are no descriptions of the Siberian nature and its beauties in the literary publications of Narodnaya Letopis', there is also no link to geography and local events. In contrast to the Tomsk periodicals, which covered regional issues and advocated "everything Siberian", the Novykolaevsk newspaper did not publish local historians, area studies experts and Siberian classics: G.N. Potanin, N.M. Yadrintsev, A.V. Adrianov. It was a city newspaper without claims on a regional scale. Unburdened by the traditions of regional history, the newspaper of the young city stood out from the all-Siberian context by the lack of regional ideas.

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