Literary and Local History Themes of Resort Press of Black Sea Province

Abstract

This article reconstructs the overall development of periodicals in the Black Sea Province during the period 1906-1917, taking into account political, economic, and social changes that influenced the publications' information policy. It argues that the formation of the resort press system in the Black Sea Province in the early 20th century was linked to the development of Sochi as a resort. The emergence of the resort press system is characterized by the short duration of publication activities and the lack of information about the personalities of the publishers and editors of the early Sochi newspapers — “Sochi Courier,” “Black Sea Region,” “Sochi Leaf.” The article restores a series of biobibliographic data related to figures such as P.N. Zhano and G.D. Toropov. It explores the specifics of the literary and local history content of Sochi city newspapers from 1906 to 1917. It is established that during the period under study, the uniqueness of the content of the early Sochi newspapers was dictated, on one hand, by the territorial specificity of the developing resort, and on the other hand, by the preferences of the readership consisting of local residents and vacationers. Resort themes were one of the main topics of publications, with the frequency of such materials usually increasing at the beginning of the season. The author concludes that materials with literary and local history focus were an important component of the information policy of each publication, often having an essayistic character. Special attention in such publications was paid to the history of the founding of Sochi.