Life in Yaroslavl in 1927-1929 as reflected in the newspaper The Northern Worker and in the works by I. Ilf and E. Petrov
The purpose of the article is to identify places of action and real events in Yaroslavl life in the last years of the New Economic Policy, reflected in the novel The Golden Calf by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov, in the satirical article «The negligent attitude to the stomach» and in I. Ilf's notebooks. Thanks to the notes of The Northern Worker journalists and caricatures by the newspaper artist F. Vesely, we were able to identify the location of the cooperative canteen described by I. Ilf and E. Petrov. and compare very different impressions of the Yaroslavl canteen shared by the writers and the local journalists. Studying the notes of The Northern Worker journalists allowed us to locate the summer cooperative garden, where the characters from the novel The Golden Calf were having lunch. The Northern Worker publications helped establish a number of real events serving as the plot for the novel's first chapters: the trial in the Sovkino branch, where Osip Sagasser, the prototype of the novel's character Adam Kozlevich, was a witness; replacement of tram tracks in the center of Yaroslavl in 1928-1929; rotting potatoes in the basement of Elijah the Prophet Church and other events of the city's life. Comparing the details of everyday life in the city, depicted in the novel The Golden Calf, satirical articles by Ilf and Petrov, and I. Ilf's notebooks with the real events that took place in 1927-1929 and reported by journalists of the Northern Worker, also helps to add to the picture of everyday life in Yaroslavl at the end of the NEP period which was mainly lost from the archival documents. The article also attempts to clarify whether journalists of the Northern Worker could have introduced Ilf and Petrov to the stories from the life of Yaroslavl residents, which were later described in the novel The Golden Calf.