Development of Russian Periodical Press in California: From the Formation to the Beginning of World War II

One of the emigrants' adaptation and integration factors into the host country's sociocultural space is the press publishing any material in the language of the original country. Such periodicals have a great number of local features that differ from each other depending on the area of their distribution. The aim of this investigation is to comprehensively analyze the development of the Russian-language periodical press which was established by the representatives of the first and second Russian emigration waves in California. To achieve this aim, the following objectives were set: identifying specific regional features of periodicals, classifying publications and determining the role of the press in the resettlement groups' adaptation process. The source base of the research is a wide-range number of newspapers and magazines published and circulated in California during the second half of the 19th - the first third of the 20th centuries. The author also relies on the historiographic heritage of the most known researchers who studied the emigrant press development in North America in the specified chronological frameworks. Materials from the State Archive of the Russian Federation are also used in this article. In the course of the investigation, the author revealed that only two periodicals were established in the years of the Russian emigration's first wave in California: Alaska Herald and The Great Ocean, they had an antimonarchist orientation. The revolutionary events in the former Russian Empire in 1917 contributed to a substantial increase in the number of Russian-language newspapers and magazines in the region. Periodicals produced by representatives of the Russian second wave emigration, which was not homogeneous in the social composition, were thematically diverse: monarchist, anti-Bolshevik, proSoviet, military, historical, scientific, artistic and literary, children's, and others. The regional emigrant press facilitated the rapid assimilation and Americanization of the resettlement groups as well as their familiarization with the sociocultural features of the new community. In the course of the investigation, other specific features of the Russian-language periodical press development in California were revealed. There was a considerable number of non-durable magazines and newspapers as well as an insignificant circulation of the Russian Orthodox Church periodicals in the region.