Thick journal
Literary magazine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Originating in the Russian Empire, a thick journal (Russian: толстый журнал, tolsty zhurnal) is a magazine format combining literary and journalistic work.[1][2][3] The name comes from its size: a typical 19th-century issue of a thick journal was 300–400 pages long, and appeared quarterly or triannually (more rarely, bimonthly).[1] Today they are usually over 200 pages long.[4]
In the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, more than half of each issue was devoted to literary works (including short stories, serialized novels, drama, poetry, and translations) and the remainder was devoted to journalism (including art criticism, literary criticism and music criticism; political, philosophical and socioreligious essays; and calendars of events).[1] Literary reputations were fostered mainly through thick journals.[4]
In the late Russian Empire they were a major vehicle of propagation of culture across the vast expanses of the country, as well as a major component of the cultural life of Russian emigres. Before the revolution, each thick journal represented one or another ideological position, including conservative, liberal and populist.[1][2]
Notable examples of early thick journals include Vestnik Evropy (Вестник Европы), Moskovsiy Telegraf (Московский телеграф), Teleskop (Телескоп), Biblioteka Dlya Chteniya (Библиотека для чтения), Sovremennik (Современник), Otechestvennye Zapiski (Отечественные записки), Mir Bozhiy (Мир божий), Zhizn (Жизнь), Obrazovanye (Образование), and Sovremennaya Zhizn (Современная жизнь).[2]
History
Early origins
Thick journals were originally a phenomenon of the Western European Enlightenment, a means to circulate ideas to a small, educated public. In the nineteenth century they faced competition from magazines that offered entertainment and information to a wider audience, so their influence diminished.[5]
Imperial Russia, 1755–1917
The first independent Russian journal was called Monthly Writings Serving Purpose and Enjoyment (Ежемесячные сочинения, к пользе и увеселению служащие, 1755–1797), edited by Gerhard Friedrich Müller, of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Inspired by the principles of the European Enlightenment, it was followed by an ever-increasing number of similar undertakings on different subjects, including literature.[4]
Many famous authors founded their own thick journals. Aleksandr Pushkin launched Sovremennik (the Contemporary), which became a famous liberal vehicle that ran for 30 years, from 1836-1866. Nikolai Karamzin created Moskovskii Zhurnal (Moscow Journal; 1791–1792), Dostoevsky launched two different journals, called Epokha (Epoch) and Vremya (Time).
A number of other journals were launched after the 1861 reforms of Alexander II, which lessened censorship in the Russian Empire. Some of the most influential thick journals of the time were the Russian Messenger, in which Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky published major works, and Russian Mind (1880–1927), to which Vladimir Korolenko, Nikolai Leskov, and Anton Chekhov contributed.[4]
Soviet Russia, 1917–1989
Towards the end of the Imperial Period, thick journals diminished in popularity, mirroring developments in Western Europe. They were, however, given new life by the Bolsheviks, who had taken control of the press and needed an authoritative new forum.[5] Many important publications were launched in the 20s and 30s, including Novy Mir (1925-), Oktyabr (1925-), Znamya (1931-), all based in Moscow; Zvezda (1924-), based in Leningrad; Sibirskie ogni (1922-), based in Novosibirsk; Don (1925-), based in Rostov-on-Don; and Zvezda Vostoka (1932-), based in Tashkent.
Thick journals were trend-setters and cultural icons that could start literary careers and end them.[3] In 1948, a campaign of Zhdanovism was directed against the thick journals Zvezda and Leningrad, for having published works by Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Zoshchenko. During the 50s and 60s, a few of these magazines had massive influence, publishing some of the most iconic books of the period. Novy Mir published Not by Bread Alone, by Dudintsev, and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Its cultural influence was so massive that Historian Cecile Vaissie has claimed that without its Editor-in-Chief, Aleksandr Tvardovsky, the 60s would not have happened.[6] Novy Mir became so associated with the liberal intelligentsia that it received hundreds of readers' letters, not only in response to its publication, but also on human rights matters such as when Boris Pasternak published Doctor Zhivago outside the USSR and was expelled from the country, and the Sinyavsky–Daniel trial.[7]
Other classics of the period also came out in thick journals before appearing as books, such as Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, published by the journal Moskva.
Modern Russia
Thick journals exploded in popularity during Perestroika, with circulation of some journals reaching more than a million copies each month. However, thick journals have drastically declined in popularity since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.[4]