Newspaper "Kavkazskie obyavleniya in the History of the Tiflis Press

Abstract

Based on the archival documents of the censorship committee, this article studies the factors that influenced the functioning and determined the suspension of the activities of the newspaper “Kavkazskie obyavleniya” (“Caucasian Advertisements”), as well as the policy and some characteristics of the newspaper.The development of advertising and reference newspapers in Tiflis in the second half of the 19th century had the following characteristics: discreteness, short publication time, broadening content, and frequent name change of newspapers. All newspapers of such type were published mainly in Russian, although when compiling the section of advertisements, the editorial boards, for the most part, gave preference to the principle of multilingualism. It was inherent for the vast majority of private periodicals in Tiflis.The newspaper “Kavkazskie obyavleniya” in some sense served as an accompaniment to the Tiflis newspapers and performed two functional roles: on the one hand, the newspaper work as an additional channel for the distribution of Tiflis press, on the other hand, the it accumulated advertising and reference information, and guaranteed the provision of this information to all readers of the Tiflis periodicals.In 1890, the censorship dismissed the publisher’s request to broaden the newspaper's content, and eventually this decision caused the closure of the newspaper.Despite the short period of existence, the newspaper “Kavkazskie obyavleniya” brought noticeable innovations to the advertising activities of the Tiflis periodicals: an endeavor to concentrate advertising and reference information in one information space and mutually beneficial cooperation with rival press.