The Role, Functions and Significance of the Genre of the Feuilleton in the Development of Siberian Literature of the Last Quarter of the 19th Century in Connection with the Activities of N. M. Yadrintsev, Writer and Editor
Authors:   State Scientific and Technical Library of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Yarantsev V.N. 
Published: February 2024

In studies devoted to the activities and creativity of N. M. Yadrintsev, a journalist and writer, until now not much attention has been paid to the genres of his journalism, which gave impetus to the development of Siberian literature – one of the goals of the regional program of Siberians. This work shows the considerable potential that the feuilleton genre revealed in the run-up to the emergence of the literature of Siberia as a phenomenon of all-Russian literature. An analysis of the feuilletons of the Sibirskaya Gazeta and Vostochnoye Obozreniye shows that this purely newspaper genre in the 1880s. was influenced by prose, developing along the path of “fictionalization” and creating the preconditions for novels. This confirms the work of F. V. Volkhovsky and K. M. Stanyukovich, where the cyclization of feuilletons and the modification of cycles into a novel are found. A similar process is observed in the work of N. M. Yadrintsev, who published a book in 1872 on the basis of a series of his articles, The Genesis of a Feuilleton by N. M. Yadrintsev had a complex nature, combining the main “regional” impulse and the influence of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. The activities of G. N. served as a counterweight to it. Potanin and his idea of the novel “Taizhane”, “tendentious” and “feuilleton” at the same time, with an emphasis on the “Siberian consciousness” and the prototype in the form of N. I. Naumov. M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin acted as a unifying principle for the tendencies of regionalism and fiction, an example of which is the feuilleton “The Flying Intelligentsia” in the spirit of Shchedrin’s “Lords of Tashkent”. Both trends complemented each other, and with the relocation of the newspaper “Eastern Review”, edited by N. M. Yadrintsev, to Siberia, showing the need for synthesis in the development of Siberian literature. This process was also developed in connection with the practice of “appendices” to newspapers in the form of “scientific and literary” collections, where the mobility of the genre framework became the norm. In the same 1880s. showed its significance and initially “technical” problem of publishing periodicals and books in local publishing houses. Related issues of distribution and reading – subscriptions and libraries – revealed them as additional factors in the development and formation of Siberian literature. This is proved both by the increase in demand for a feuilleton in the newspaper, and by the intention of N. M. Yadrintsev to publish a book of feuilletons, carried out only after his death by V. M. Krutovsky. In the book, the universality of the genre is confirmed by the publication of feuilletons in a circle of other articles and poems and by the publisher’s definition of a feuilleton as a “special genre”: both “artistic and literary” and “accusatory”. The phenomenon of the priority of the feuilleton, which has become a synthetic genre, can be interpreted as a symptom of the acceleration of the development of Siberian literature against the background of the all-Russian in overcoming the backlog: the creation of a developed genre system, the literary process, the replacement of almanacs by periodicals. An independent factor was the need for local publishing houses, which strengthened the feeling of Siberian self-awareness for both writers and readers, when demand largely depended on the connection of literature with local interests and needs. The feuilleton genre inspired by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin and modified by N. M. Yadrintsev in collaboration with G. N. Potanin, played an important role in this.