Детская тема на страницах сибирской периодической печати (по материалам газеты "Сибирская жизнь", 1897–1900 гг.)

Abstract

The article considers literary, journalistic and advertising materials devoted to childhood and children, published in a Siberian pre-revolutionary periodical. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, the topic of childhood was constantly covered in Russian periodicals, which was connected with the growth in public education, the development of children’s pedagogy, as well as with the general humanization of the public sphere. Texts about children were written not only by the capital’s newspapers, but also by regional newspapers and magazines, which made a great contribution to drawing public attention to the situation of young Russian residents. The aim of this study is to determine the demand for the themes of childhood and the features of their coverage in one of the leading regional newspapers of Russia – Sibirskaya zhizn’, which was published in Tomsk from 1897 to 1919. The newspaper was founded by the famous Siberian businessman and philanthropist Petr Makushin, covered the life of Western and Eastern Siberia, wrote about Russian and foreign events. The average circulation was about 10,000 copies. It is plain to see the scope of this newspaper’s influence over quite a large territory. This study conveys its research through such means as selection of materials, determination and analysis of volumes of materials, identification of main topics of these themes and features of their presentation. The empiric material consists of publications providing insight into themes of childhood in issues of the newspaper Sibirskaya zhizn’ published from November 1897 to December 1900. The main methods of the study were frontal analysis of the newspaper content, complex analysis of the periodical, content analysis, historical-typological and structural-thematic analysis. The author comes to the conclusion that the topic of childhood was in demand by the society, the materials about children were published in every fourth issue of the newspaper, although they were small in volume. The genre palette includes a relatively small number of forms: story, essay, report, note, review, article. The most frequently discussed topics in the newspaper were school, parents, poverty, health, charity, books, and education. In addition, while the literature mainly paints a dramatically negative picture of children’s life, attracting reader’s attention to a social problem, journalism acts as a kind of “counterweight” to it, showing real examples of assistance to children from society’s side. Journalists of the 19th century saw the life of children as extremely difficult, consisting of difficult learning, hard and destructive labor, brutal environment, full of orphanhood and poverty. But Sibirskaya zhizn’ tirelessly stressed that children are fragile, that they need protection, support and care that society can and ought to provide to them.