Information on the thesis

The dissertation presents a complex monographic research of the book of travel
essays by Illia Ilf and Yevgen Petrov as a social-communicative phenomenon
to determine the reasons for the profound effect of Illia Ilf and Yevgen Petrov’s
book on public. In this case, the journey essay is considered as an independent
genre, which is genetically connected with a guidebook and which appeared
long before the appearance of an essay itself in Western European, and then in
Slavic journalism. It has been stated that “Little Golden America” arose from
the author’s initiative and is a manifestation of creative freedom, limited by the
rigid socio-political circumstances of the era of totalitarianism. It has been shown
that the main communicative goal of the authors is informational, but they were
guided simultaneously by the publicistic-cognitive and propagandistic-ideological
settings. The dominant informational communicative intention defi nes the basic
principle of representing reality – documentalism. In this case, there are two verbal
forms of realization of the informational intentions of the authors: the refl ection
of a separate fact of reality in the form of a holistic documentary-visual image
and factual-statistical report. The publicistic synthesis of facts is carried out in the
form of judgments and in attempts to create cognitive-informational models. The
propagandistic-ideological setting of the authors is realized through ideologemes,
which at that time were developed by the Bolshevik propagandistic machine.
As the genre form “Little Golden America” is a guidebook, the peculiarities of
which, except the main one – informational, were infl uenced by the publicistic
and propagandistic intentions of the authors, which introduced the features that are
not characteristic of “praforma” into the work. In the genre form of the book there
are elements that structurally represent the facts of reality refl ected in the whole:
the route, the narrative of the way which is characterized by the syncretism of the
traveler, observer and narrator’s viewpoint, architectonics (separation of the text
into parts and chapters and their sequence), and as well as the opposition “native
– alien “and means of its leveling by the narrators. It has been revealed that the
main types of genre content of the book are also produced in accordance with the authors’ communicative intentions. Informational intentions are implemented in the
essay genre content, publicistic – in the format of a journalistic review article about
American cinema, propagandistic-ideological – in the content of the “political
text”, which is not identifi ed in the genre respect.
Huge amount of new information, cognitive processing of the material, controversial
combination of «vertical» and «horizontal» propaganda, richness and diversity of
genre content – all these are combined into the integrity of high quality due to the
subordination of its genre form, the principles of selection, display and processing
of facts, as well as the structuring of genre content according to the communicative
aims of the authors – the main, informational and media, cognitive-publicistic and
ideological-propagandistic. High mass communication effectiveness is explained by
the homogeneity of the elements of the linear model of mass communication, fi rst of
all the genre form and the genre content, which is the result of continuous action of
the authors’ communicative intentions. On the whole genre-communicative features
of «Little Golden America» are rooted in its verbal character – this is a documentary
rather than artistic and publicistic book of travel essays, in which journalistic and
propagandistic components can be also traced.
Key words: Illia Ilf and Yevgen Petrov, Little Golden America, guidebook, travel
essay, genre form and genre content, types of mass communication, documentary
studies, publicism, vertical propaganda, social (horizontal propaganda), mass-
communicative influence.