Literary Reportage of the 1920s and 1930s as a Genre of Left-Wing Art (on the Materials of “Nova Generatsiia” Journal)

The article analyzes the existence of the genre of literary reportage in the “Nova Generatsiia” (New Generation) journal (1927–1930). The author had examined texts indicated by the editors as reportage, literary reportage, and their variations. All comments, remarks, and critical articles in the journal, related to the genre are also examined. So, despite the common believe that literary reportage developed on 1960-1970 it is apparent that in Ukraine publishing it have earlier begun. Among 36 existing journal issues, approximately 28 fiction texts in them were classified as reportage, with 4 being labelled as “literary reportage”, so we can assume genre as productive. The most contributed authors were Oleksandr Maryamov, Oleksiy Poltoratskiy, and Oleksandr Perehuda. The defining features of reviewed texts include the autobiographical narrative, frequent author’s intervention in the text, the inclusion of numerous reflections, side stories, some of which not related to the main topic. Additionally, reportage may employ strong emotional tone, addresses the reader, playing with them or using other writing techniques. Some of these reportages were also published as independent fiction books, which confirms the granted ‘literary’ status to this genre. Most frequently, the texts represented authors’ travels or business trips and focus on key modern topics, as cultural and social issues, polemic with other literature groups, industrialization and technical progress etc. It is established that despite the active development of “literary reportage”, the issues of its characteristics and, consequently, the distinction between reporting, literary reporting, and essay remain debatable. Most of the analyzed texts have syncretic genre features, sometimes belonging to experimental forms, such as poetic or polemical reportage. Therefore, it is suggested to describe selected texts by “reportage” and “literary reportage” as synonyms. The author established the need and relevance of further thematic studies.