Feuilleton

Feuilleton [фейлетон; feileton]. A short literary composition characteristic of the popular periodic press (newspapers, magazines) and distinguished by a familiar tone, thematic currency, satiric wit, or humor. The feuilleton has been known in Ukrainian literature since the publication of the journal Osnova (Saint Petersburg) (1861–2). At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century Ivan Franko, Osyp Makovei, and Volodymyr Samiilenko were among the best-known feuilleton writers. In the Soviet period the classical writer of feuilletons was Ostap Vyshnia, who wrote many cycles of what he called usmishky (smiles). In the 1920s Anatol Hak, Vasyl Chechviansky, and others were popular feuilletonists. After the 1930s the main subjects of Soviet feuilletons were bureaucracy, lack of labor discipline, theft of state property, and alcoholism. Quite a large number of feuilletons were defamatory critiques of Ukrainian dissidents and émigrés, who were labeled ‘bourgeois nationalists.’ Among the best-known authors of this genre were Yaroslav Halan, Yurii Melnychuk, Taras Myhal, Fedir Makivchuk, and Stepan Oliinyk. One of the most popular Ukrainian feuilletonists in the West was Ivan S. Kernytsky.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]