EVERYDAY LIFE OF A REGIONAL NEWSPAPER IN 1956 (V. V. PERUANSKAYA’S STORY “FOUR PAGES”)

The article analyses the story “Four Pages” (“Chetyre polosy”) by the “unappreciated” author Valeria Peruanskaya (1920–2011) in the context of the Thaw period literature. The literary work is devoted to depicting the everyday life of the editorial staff of a regional newspaper against the background of global political and social changes in relation to the speech of N. S. Khrushchev. Based on materials from the writer’s archive, the article considers the history of the publication of a text that was subjected to strong censorship edits, and makes a comparison between the author’s and magazine versions of the story. It also adduces the most illustrative examples proving the interrelation of most of the censorship removals with the reference to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party and the author’s critical attitude to the relevant political and social situation. The article cites both private and journalistic critical reviews, reflecting the general trend of editors’ work with text during the late Thaw period. As V. Peruanskaya worked on the text for almost ten years, the text becomes not only a testimony of the era, but also an attempt to comprehend and overcome the collective traumas of an entire generation.