“The Picture of the Local Sentiment”: The Circumstances of the Ban and the Content of the First Feuilleton

The aim of the study is to clarify the circumstances of banning the feuilleton “Essays and Pictures of Provincial Life” and to analyse its content. This is possible due to the fact that the text of the feuilleton was preserved in a typographic copy. This print was sent to the General Directorate of Press and is preserved in the archival materials “On the Publication of Sibirskaya Gazeta in Tomsk”. The study of this plot clarifies the editorial policy of Sibirskaya Gazeta [Siberian Newspaper] regarding the publication of other feuilletons. In 1881, the “literaturecentric” model of Sibirskaya Gazeta was only being formed, and during this year the newspaper mainly published informational (telegrams, chronicles, correspondence) and analytical (articles, reviews) genres. Essays were most in demand among the artistic and journalistic genres. As for feuilletons, in 1881, with a great deal of conventionality, only “Ignatiy Nikitich (A Siberian Type)” can be attributed to this genre. Feuilletons were originally announced in the programme of Sibirskaya Gazeta”, but the feuilleton section appeared only in the second year of the periodical. It immediately became one of the most popular and demanded among readers. In total, over 140 feuilletons were published in Sibirskaya Gazeta; they became the most resonant and discussed materials, and formed a kind of a “face” of the periodical. The study of the archives of the General Directorate of Press, namely, the file “On the Publication of Sibirskaya Gazeta in Tomsk”, found that, in 1881, an attempt was made to publish a feuilleton. It was supposed to be published in No. 11 of Sibirskaya Gazeta, but after a clash with the local censor M. A. Gilyarov this issue of the newspaper was not released. The editors tried to defend their first feuilleton, yet they failed. The feuilleton was not published in the banned No. 11 and in the subsequent issues of Sibirskaya Gazeta. The material was not signed. Its attribution is also complicated by the fact that there were no more such publications in the newspaper in 1881. From the editorial staff in 1881, the feuilleton could belong to the pen of A.V. Adrianov, who laid the tradition of covering the Siberian theme in satirical genres, or to the pen of N. M. Yadrintsev, who often divided residents into single carriers of progress and ordinary people in his other works. The first feuilleton of Sibirskaya Gazeta, despite the editorial efforts to present it simply as “pictures of the local sentiment”, was in fact the burning, prompt and keen response of its author to the resonant sociopolitical events of Russia in 1881-the death of Emperor Alexander I. For the editors of Sibirskaya Gazeta, the story of banning No. 11 in general and publishing the feuilleton in particular came to be a rather painful and valuable lesson. The editors learnt the boundaries of what is permissible in interaction with censorship and the need for a more accurate work with feuilleton texts.

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