Korney Chukovsky between “Odessa News” and “Theatrical Russia”

The article deals with a little-known episode of the literary activity of K.I. Chukovsky, which is characterized by the collaboration of the young critic in provincial and metropolitan periodicals. From spring to autumn 1905, Chukovsky was simultaneously published in the “Odessa News” and the St. Petersburg weekly “Theatrical Russia”. Publications in both editions were revealed: in the capital’s journal they are twice as large as those in Odessa, they include texts signed with pseudonyms and not considered in Chukovsky’s bibliography. Most of the work is related to the profile of the magazine: these are reviews and notes on theatrical topics. The smaller one is a literary-critical articles, three of them Chukovsky published with changes in parallel in St. Petersburg and Odessa. Special attention is paid to these materials, which makes it possible to reveal Chukovsky’s authorial intentions, determined by his notions about the provincial and metropolitan readership. The article analyzes the mechanism of the work of a young author on a radical revision of articles about M. Gorky, L. Andreev and Evg. Solovyov, which appeared in a provincial newspaper and a Moscow magazine at almost the same time. An optional but important aspect of the study is the question of the degree of success in representing of these Chukovsky’s articles in the latest collected works in 15 volumes.