... they are still alive today
"Thick" magazines are literary monthly magazines, in which novelties of literature were published in separate volumes before publication.In the USSR, “thick” magazines included Novy Mir, Oktyabr, Znamya, Neva, Moscow, Our Contemporary, Friendship of Peoples, Foreign Literature, Siberian Lights, Ural", "Star", "Don", "Volga" to some extent "Youth", although it was thinner than the others. These magazines were published in A1 format. There were also small-format "thick" magazines "Aurora", "Young Guard", "Change".
"Thick" magazines should not be confused with the rest. There were also quite a few of them in the Soviet Union: “Worker”, “Peasant Woman”, “Crocodile”, “Spark”, “Soviet Union”. They came out in different ways: once a month or weekly.
There were magazines for interests and for different ages: “Around the World”, “Young Technician”, “Young Naturalist”, “Bonfire”, “Pioneer”, “Science and Religion”, “Science and Life”, “Technology of Youth”, “ Knowledge is Power”, “Chemistry and Life”, “Health”, “Sport Games”, “Driving”, “Journalist”.
- "Banner"
- "Moscow"
- "October"
- "Foreign literature"
- "Youth"
AT "October" the story "The Sad Detective" by V. Astafyev and the novel by A. Rybakov "Heavy Sand" were published. There were works by A. Adamovich, B. Akhmadulina, G. Baklanov, B. Vasiliev, A. Voznesensky, F. Iskander, Yu. Moritz, Yu. Nagibin, V. Mayakovsky, A. Platonov, S. Yesenin, Yu. Olesha, M. Zoshchenko, M. Prishvin, A. Gaidar, K. Paustovsky. L. Feuchtwanger, V. Bredel, R. Rolland, A. Barbusse, T. Dreiser, M. Andersen-Nexo, G. Mann.
AT "Banner" were published "The Fall of Paris" by I. Ehrenburg, "Zoya" by M. Aliger, "Son" by P. Antokolsky, "The Young Guard" by A. Fadeev, "In the Trenches of Stalingrad" by V. Nekrasov, military prose by Grossman, Kazakevich. In the poetic works of B. Pasternak, A. Akhmatova, A. Voznesensky. In the first years of perestroika, Znamya returned to the reader the forgotten and forbidden works of M. Bulgakov, E. Zamyatin, A. Platonov, and published A. Sakharov's Memoirs.
AT "Neva" published according to Wikipedia D. Granin, the Strugatsky brothers, L. Gumilyov, L. Chukovskaya, V. Konetsky, V. Kaverin, V. Dudintsev, V. Bykov.
Neva introduced readers to Robert Conquest's The Great Terror and Arthur Koestler's novel Blinding Darkness.
AT "Youth" V. Aksenov, D. Rubina, A. Aleksin, A. Gladilin, V. Rozov, A. Yashin, N. Tikhonov, A. Voznesensky, B. Okudzhava, B. Akhmadulina were published.
A. Kuznetsov published his novel Babi Yar.
Modern circulations of "Tolstoy" magazines
It was very difficult to get "thick" magazines in the Soviet Union. Subscribe to them was carried out only by pull (although the circulation of "Youth" exceeded three million copies), if they were received in the kiosks of "Soyuzpechat" they were in a minimal amount. Libraries were available only in reading rooms. Today in Russia I don’t want to read, you can subscribe to anyone, but everyone has scanty circulations: in Novy Mir there are 7200 copies, in Oktyabr and Znamya there are less than 5000, in Friendship of Peoples - 3000.
The financier Dmitry, having read Russian literature of the 19th century and obsessed with a passion for power and greed, like a negative prototype of a gentleman from Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, or even Nekrasov, bought a plot of land one hundred and fifty kilometers from the capital and built a luxurious house with outbuildings, a kennel, a barn, a stable, and twenty-five hastily put together huts. He hired serfs in the surrounding collective farms. They signed a contract printed on a laser printer. The whole way of life on his estate corresponded to the original of the middle of the last century, plus an annual remuneration to employees - two thousand dollars for each family member. Already on the second day of the new era, the lordly mayhem begins in the village. "His wild amusements largely followed the historical tradition, subtracted from the great Russian literature, which had a detrimental effect on Dmitry's non-standard psyche." By "wild fun" is meant the flogging of the guilty peasants, and the unlimited violence of the master and his wife over the yard girls, and the home theater with the only play "Woe from Wit" ... But now, according to the canons, St. George's Day is coming. The new Russian gentleman arranges a folk festival: three buckets of vodka for peasants, two buckets of port wine for women, songs, dances. According to the granary book, he calls out the peasants and pays by the capitation. The next morning, it turns out that all the serfs have extended their contracts for another year. And three years later, the serfs formed a "new self-consciousness" and they began to treat master Dmitry as a father - strict, but fair ...
After such a plot, a documentary essay by Boris Yekimov on a similar topic called "Near the Old Graves" with quoting extracts from the protocol of the board of the collective farm "Victory of October" dated July 7, 1997 is perceived almost as a parody of reality: "... winter wheat has almost disappeared completely...", "there is no fuel...", "to ask the district administration to defer debt repayment"...
Let's skip Elmira Kotlyar's poems and read two stories by Grigory Petrov. One about the swamp priest. Another, more fun, is about the unemployed Shishigin and his wife, who went to the circus...
Poems by Jan Holtzman.
In the section "Far - Close" - continuation of the publication of fragments from the diaries of literary critic, publicist and culturologist Alexander Vasilyevich Dedkov (1934-1994). "Desalted Time" is a rather boring story about the writer's life in Soviet times.
Under the heading "Publications and communications" - the next chapters of Vitaly Shentalinsky's book "Slaves of Freedom". In particular, "Shards of the Silver Age" is devoted to a conscientious analysis of the relationship between the philosopher Berdyaev and the Soviet authorities.
Let the lovers of literary criticism enjoy the studies of M. Butov and D. Bak, or at least get acquainted with their reflections on two modern examples of "super-narration", which are the "Alexandria Quartet" by the Englishman Lawrence Darrell and the camp saga of our compatriot Yevgeny Fedorov.
In my favorite for some time now heading "Reviews and Reviews" are published:
Dmitry Bavilsky's review of Oleg Ermakov's novel "The Trans-Siberian Pastoral";
Olga Ivanova's review of a good book of poems "Sky in subtitles" by poetess Yulia Skorodumova.
Vitaly Kalpidi will soon read a review of his collection of poetry "Eyelashes", written by his countryman Vladimir Abashev. Will it comfort him? After all, the Apollon Grigoriev Prize ended up in the hands of his colleague in the shop ...
The issue ends with a list of 1997 literary magazine award winners. And below, in a box, - "From the annals of the Novy Mir": 70 years ago in # 5 for 1928, the publication of the second part of Maxim Gorky's "Life of Klim Samgin" began.
"Our Contemporary"
On the cover of the magazine - its emblem, the image of the main symbol of civil insubordination - a monument to Minin and Pozharsky. Let me remind you that the editor-in-chief of the magazine is Stanislav Kunyaev. The circulation of the publication is 14,000 copies, which is quite a lot.
The May issue opens with poems by war participant Viktor Kochetkov and continues with the second book of Mikhail Alekseev's novel "My Stalingrad". The author recently turned eighty years old.
Alexander Kuznetsov also wrote about the war. But about the recent war, the Chechen one, in which he participated. In the photo - a man in a black robe.
We've been betrayed again, folks! / Again we abandoned our own. / Throwing machine guns over his shoulders, / let's remember for three!
The war is over. She was forgotten, / As my country forgets everything. / Who became a general, who was killed, / Who drank away all the orders on an empty stomach. /
A selection of poems by Gleb Gorbovsky. The continuation of Ernst Safonov's novel "Get Out of the Circle" begins with the phrase: "Avdonin returned home from the district executive committee at eleven o'clock, and although it was late, his father-in-law appeared right there, with a large bag in his hands." Ending in the next issue.
The main features of the classic magazine "usual Russian type".
Thick magazine at the turn of the century.
“Our Russian literature (as a whole) has, among many unique features, one that distinguishes it extremely from Western European literature.
This feature is a significant distribution of the so-called thick magazines,” noted in 1912 the bibliographer N.A. Ulyanov in the preface to the Index of Journal Literature compiled by him. The fact that a thick magazine - a type of periodical, brought to life by the peculiar conditions of Russia, plays a special role in Russian journalism, was noted by everyone who wrote about the development of the press system in the country.
The most common characteristics of a thick magazine are: firstly, volume (up to 300 - 500 pages); secondly, the totality of topics that are in the sphere of his attention; thirdly, the special composition of the issue, which combines a literary and artistic collection, a political newspaper and a kind of scientific encyclopedia. These three objects of attention of a thick magazine, three areas of its interests are in a magazine issue in a ratio determined by the uniqueness of the historical period and the state of the readership. At different times, one of them may come to the fore, pushing the others into the background, but not completely ousting them. This is clearly seen in the study of the history of the thick magazine in Russia.
In the XIX - early XX century. in the European press, journals were mainly distributed by specialties, by branches of science. They counted on their specific reader, and not on a wide range of intelligent people. The type of such publications is a review - revus, consisting of short articles, each issue is a complete whole, without continuing publications. Easily accessible in the West, the books left the magazine "only a small place in the literary market."
In Russia, with its vast territories, rare oases of culture, in the absence of good communications and a limited number of books, it was the journal that became the only supplier of fiction, various information about topical events, and reports on the achievements of science. “For 7-10 rubles,” writes N.A. Ulyanov, - the subscriber receives 12 thick books in which the experienced editors present the reader with the most diverse material to satisfy his curiosity. To some extent, the journal satisfies an acute, especially acute need for the provinces, the need to follow the intellectual life of all mankind. He paid a subscription fee and for the whole year is provided in this respect with the articles of his journal. A major role in this type of magazine publication was played by novels printed with continuation, extensive articles, which created the reader's "expectation effect" for the next issue, forcing them to subscribe for a year.
A complete description of the thick journal as a type of publication is contained in the article by D.E. Maksimov, published in 1930 in the collection "From the past of Russian journalism." The author of the article not only showed the reasons for the appearance of a thick journal in the system of Russian journalism, but also identified the main type-forming features of such a publication. The contradiction between the needs of the intelligentsia and the lack of necessary books in the provinces “was resolved by the creation of a form of a thick magazine, which makes it possible to combine in one book a kind of scientific encyclopedia, a literary and artistic collection and a political newspaper,” D.E.
Maksimov2.
The thick journal was the dominant type of periodical in the system of Russian journalism for almost a century. Created by N.M. Karamzin and M.T. Kachenovsky, the journal Vestnik Evropy became the first classic thick edition in Russia. With the goal of acquainting the reader with the life of Europe, reprinting extracts from 12 European newspapers, Vestnik Evropy very quickly acquired departments characteristic of subsequent thick magazines: fiction and criticism, political and scientific. Professional interests of the long-term publisher M.T. Kachenovsky - a professor at Moscow University, a historian - was brought to the fore by scientific departments. This is how not only a “magazine of the usual Russian type” appeared, as contemporaries called it, but also its variety - an “encyclopedic thick magazine”. It received its fullest expression in the publication of O. Senkovsky "Library for Reading". When creating it, the publisher was guided by the Parisian “Bibliotheque Universelle” (universal library), but, as almost always happened in Russia, the European model underwent a significant transformation, turning into a magazine of the “ordinary Russian type”. "Moscow Telegraph", "Telescope", "Library for Reading" were encyclopedic magazines. They focused on educating their readers, introducing them to the achievements of scientific thought. “The encyclopedic journal, to a certain extent, broke the class boundaries of journalism. It was a magazine about everything and for everyone, not only for a narrow circle of the educated nobility, the metropolitan par excellence.
The famous opposition magazines Sovremennik and Otechestvennye Zapiski by N.A. Nekrasov and M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. They came out at the most acute moments in the history of the country, when the intensity of political passions forced the editors to reduce the "scientific encyclopedia" to a minimum, concentrating all their attention on the coverage of political events that overshadowed even such a traditional area for a Russian magazine as fiction. The type of journal created by Sovremennik and Otechestvennye Zapiski, D.E. Maksimov and B.I. Esin was called journalistic. In such a journal, a political newspaper comes to the fore, the materials of which are published in the journalistic departments that existed in all thick magazines: Internal Review, Foreign Review, Provincial Review, From Public Life, etc. A peculiar genre of review gave the opportunity to talk about the events that took place during the month, comment on them and express your attitude to what is happening. The review usually presented a number of small articles devoted to the main events of the month. The topics of these articles were placed in the subtitle. So, for example, in the 8th issue of Vestnik Evropy for 1909, the Internal Review consisted of the following articles: Unfulfilled Expectations, His Majesty's Opposition and the Official Press, Moderately Reactionary Programme, Suspension newspaper "Slovo". Even literary criticism very often took the form of a review; it is enough to recall the famous articles by V.G. Belinsky.
In the analytical reviews and newsreels of the thick magazine, its ideological program and direction were expressed. “Journalism, pursuing mainly social and educational goals,” writes D.E. Maksimov, - naturally, put forward reviews and articles, and treated fiction as an inevitable concession to the frivolous reader. Therefore, non-fiction departments (especially political review) were given a lot of space. The Russian thick magazine, especially its journalistic variety, is characterized by a special attitude towards fiction, which was not only a “concession to the frivolous reader”. It was more important that in the journal “the works of art placed in it are perceived by the reader first of all as the views of the journal itself and only secondly as the individual opinions of authors with one or another worldview. The literary personality of a writer participating in an ideologically determined body helps to comprehend and supports not so much individual parts of the journal (an article, a poem, etc.), as the entire journal as a whole.
The type of thick magazine actively dictated its requirements for the literary material placed in the issue. Not every literary work could be published on its pages, but only consonant with its program. In addition, the magazine context gave the novel or story new shades, perhaps not foreseen by the writer. “It is known that in traditional Russian journalistic journalism of the journalistic type,” E.D. Maksimov, “each ideologically tightly knit organ to some extent depersonalizes the material placed in it, acquiring a special function in it compared to that which would be characteristic of this material outside the journal. The material included in the journal loses its individual shades and turns towards the reader with its total, typological side, both in the ideological and partly in the aesthetic sense.
Thus, the ratio of departments, the role of fiction, political news and encyclopedic publications in the composition of the issue help to determine the nature of the journal in question, to attribute it to the encyclopedic, journalistic or literary subtype.
The “ordinary Russian type” of the journal, best adapted to the peculiar conditions of Russia, familiar to the reader, who knew well what he wanted and could find in the journal book he received, often dictated his terms to the editors of the journals. Thus, for example, the Vestnik Evropy, revived in 1866, was conceived according to the type of English three-monthly magazines, but by the end of the second year of publication it was forced to become a monthly of the “ordinary Russian type”, since the reader’s journal is published once every three months. did not suit. To do this, “he only needed to turn into permanent departments what until now had a more or less random character in him, fiction and chronicle,” said the editor of Vestnik Evropy, K.K. Arseniev subsequently6.
In 1892, the journal "The World of God" was published, which then played a prominent role in the system of Russian journals. But it was conceived as a publication "for youth and self-education." In the second half of the 1990s, the magazine turned into a socio-political and literary publication of the same "usual Russian type".
The magazine Life, created as a magazine for family reading, Education, originally called Women's Education, and some others that arose in the 90s of the 19th century, inevitably transformed into traditional thick publications.
This was caused, firstly, by the demands of the audience, who wanted to see the new magazine the way they were used to reading in the almost 100-year history of the development of journalism. Secondly, social life, which became more complicated in the pre-revolutionary period, demanded from the editors a wide generalizing coverage, detailed comments, exactly what the thick magazine was so well adapted to.
But at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries. the development of newspapers pushed the magazine from the first place in the press system. Talk about the death of this type of publications was heard everywhere. The journal Sovremennaya Zhizn wrote in 1906 that the thick journals are “too slow and too cumbersome to be the main channels of ideological currents in acute periods of social life. True, their solidity and thoroughness in working out the tasks of the time are much higher than the methods of the frivolous press. But when the center of gravity of interests is not in theoretical, but in practical creativity, as long as there is no voluntary or involuntary lull, reaction, this solidity helps them little”7.
The main reproach to the thick magazine is its slowness and cumbersomeness. But there were other reasons for the decline in the prestige of publications of this type. The accelerated rhythm of historical development, the complication of social life, the growth of literacy of the population led to a significant increase in the readership, which was interested in a wider range of not only social, but also scientific and cultural problems. The thick magazine, for all its versatility, no longer met all the requirements of readers. For example, interest in scientific problems has increased significantly, especially since the scientific and technological progress of the early 20th century. contributed to this. Thick magazines noticed this, at the turn of the century the role of encyclopedic material increased, much attention was paid to the problems of education and enlightenment. For a fairly short time, journals again became encyclopedic. But a significant differentiation of sciences, interest in the natural sciences - mathematics, chemistry, medicine, etc. - brought to life a large number of specialized publications for trained readers and popular science for those interested. "Bulletin of knowledge", "Bulletin and library for self-education", "Knowledge for all", "Around the world", "Nature and people" in the XX century. fully solved encyclopedic problems.
Before the first Russian revolution, as well as in 1905-1907. the development of events forced thick magazines to focus again on understanding what was happening. At this time, almost all the press was political, and magazines acquired a journalistic character. But the development of political newspapers, especially party organs, was a serious competition for the journal.
Another new phenomenon of life was reflected in the fate of the thick magazine - the emergence of new literary trends and schools that caused a great public response and exacerbation of the literary struggle. To solve complex aesthetic issues, those that appeared at the very end of the 19th century were more suitable. “manifesto magazines”, “World of Art”, “New Way”, “Scales”, etc. Artistic works began to be published not in magazines, but in various almanacs issued by numerous publishing houses, around which writers of different directions were grouped. The collections of the publishing houses Znanie, Rosehip, Northern Flowers, Scorpion and many others made it possible to show their work without the ideological "additive" introduced by the direction of the magazine. Fiction, its best examples, also gradually left the cover of the traditional edition, as it became cramped there. This does not mean that thick magazines were completely left without good fiction after the revolution of 1905-1907. many Russian writers again returned to solid publications read by the intelligentsia, even tried to give them a predominantly literary character, but in the years preceding the revolutionary upheavals of 1917 this process "did not go." During the period of class struggles, the First World War, revolutions, journalistic articles came to the fore. Theatrical and art reviews are leaving the thick magazine: the development of theater and fine arts, the complication of aesthetic disputes and in these areas contribute to the formation of special publications - theatrical, artistic, musical, etc.
“Our Russian literature (as a whole) has, among many unique features, one that distinguishes it extremely from Western European literature. This feature is a significant distribution of the so-called thick magazines,” noted in 1912 the bibliographer N.A. Ulyanov in the preface to the Index of Journal Literature compiled by him. The fact that a thick magazine - a type of periodical, brought to life by the peculiar conditions of Russia, plays a special role in Russian journalism, was noted by everyone who wrote about the development of the press system in the country.
The general characteristics of a thick magazine are:
a set of topics that are in the area of attention to the journal;
volume (300-500 pages).
All three areas of interest are in the magazine issue in a ratio determined by the uniqueness of the historical period and the state of the readership. Any of the three areas can come to the fore, as a result of crowding out the rest into the background. A similar phenomenon is observed in the study of the history of the thick journal in Russia.
In the XIX - early XX century. in the European press, journals had a specialized character - they were divided into branches of science. They counted not on a wide circle of intelligent people, but on their specific reader. The type of such publications - review - consisting of short articles. Each issue is a complete whole, without publications continuing to it.
In Russia, with its vast territories, in the absence of good communications and a limited number of books, the journal became a source of fiction, information about topical events and reports on the achievements of science. “For 7-10 rubles,” writes N. A. Ulyanov, “the subscriber receives 12 thick books, in which the experienced editors present the reader with the most diverse material to satisfy his curiosity. To some extent, the journal satisfies an acute, especially acute need for the provinces, the need to follow the intellectual life of all mankind. He paid a subscription fee and for the whole year is provided in this regard with articles from his journal.
A major role in the journal was played by novels printed with continuation, extensive scientific and critical articles, which created the reader's "expectation effect" for the next issue, a possible annual subscription to it.
A complete description of the thick journal as a type of publication is contained in the article by D. E. Maksimov, published in 1930 in the collection “From the Past of Russian Journalism”. The author of the article not only showed the reasons for the emergence of a thick journal in the system of Russian journalism, but also highlighted the main type-forming features of this publication. The contradiction between the needs of the intelligentsia and the lack of necessary books in the provinces “was resolved by creating a form of a thick journal, which makes it possible to combine in one book a kind of scientific encyclopedia, a literary and artistic collection and a political newspaper,” D. E. Maksimov accurately noted.
The thick journal was the dominant type of periodical in the system of Russian journalism for almost a century.
At the beginning of the XX century. the oldest of the thick magazines was Vestnik Evropy. In 1915, during the First World War, the magazine celebrated its 50th anniversary.
Founded in 1802 by an outstanding historian, the largest Russian writer of the era of sentimentalism, Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin and a professor at Moscow State University, historian Mikhail Trofimovich Kachenovsky, the journal of historical and political sciences Vestnik Evropy was closed in 1830. In 1866, five professors of St. Petersburg State University, who were forced to resign due to disagreement with government policy in the field of education, were the Russian historian, publicist and editor M.M. Stasyulevich; Russian legal historian K.D. Kavelin; Russian literary critic, ethnographer, academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1898), vice-president of the Academy of Sciences (1904) A.N. Pypin; Russian jurist, prominent lawyer, Polish publicist, critic and historian of Polish literature, public figure V.D. Spasovich; professor B.I. Utin - published a new magazine in St. Petersburg.
“We restored the name of the Karamzin magazine in 1866, when the 100th anniversary of the birth of Karamzin was celebrated, thereby wishing to honor his memory,” Vestnik Evropy wrote later.
The Bulletin of Europe was published in St. Petersburg from March 1866 to March 1918, monthly, in 1866-1867. - 4 times a year, became the first classic thick edition in Russia. The first two years of V. E." was a scientific historical journal. In addition to scientific articles and historical fiction, the chronicle and bibliography were printed on its pages. In 1868, the content of the Vestnik was expanded to include departments for domestic and foreign policy.
With the goal of acquainting the reader with the life of Europe, reprinting extracts from 12 European newspapers, Vestnik Evropy very quickly acquired sections characteristic of subsequent thick magazines: fiction and criticism, political and scientific. A tribute to the time was also the appearance on the pages of a thick magazine of color drawings and reproductions, advertisements and announcements. Announcements about new books, about subscriptions to magazines were traditionally placed on the covers of such publications. But in the 1910s, Vestnik Evropy began to publish other advertisements: sewing machines, lingerie, and so on. This gave the magazine material resources, since the circulation was low, and there was not enough money from the subscription.
Professional interests of the long-term publisher M.T. Kachenovsky brought to the fore the scientific departments. The new edition of Vestnik Evropy significantly expanded the range of topics of the magazine, became more attentive to social issues and tried, by expanding the chronicle department, to overcome the slowness and cumbersomeness that critics reproached the journals for. But it was not possible to bring the initiated transformations to the end. This was prevented by the outbreak of the First World War and the revolution of 1917. At the beginning of 1918, the magazine was closed.
This is how not only a “magazine of the usual Russian type” appeared, as contemporaries called it, but also its variety - an “encyclopedic thick magazine”. It received its fullest expression in the publication of the well-known Russian bookseller and publisher Alexander Filippovich Smirdin, edited by Osip-Yulian Ivanovich Senkovsky, "Library for Reading". When creating the "Library ...", the Parisian "Bibliotheque Universelle" (universal library) served as a guide, but, as almost always happened in Russia, the European model underwent a significant transformation, turning into a magazine of the "usual Russian type". "Moscow Telegraph", "Telescope", "Library for Reading" were encyclopedic magazines. They focused on educating their readers, introducing them to the achievements of scientific thought. “The encyclopedic journal, to a certain extent, broke the class boundaries of journalism. It was a magazine about everything and for everyone, not only for a narrow circle of educated nobility, par excellence in the capital.”
The famous opposition magazines Sovremennik (1836) and Domestic Notes (1820) by N.A. were classic thick editions. Nekrasov and M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. They came out in an era of political passions, which forced the editors to reduce the scientific part of the journal to a minimum, focusing all the reader's attention on the country's domestic politics. The field of fiction also sharply lost its significance. The type of journal created by Sovremennik and Otechestvennye Zapiski, D.E. Maksimov and B.I. Esin was called journalistic. In such a journal, a political newspaper comes to the fore, the materials of which are published in the journalistic departments that existed in all thick magazines: Internal Review, Foreign Review, Provincial Review, From Public Life, etc. A peculiar genre of review gave the opportunity to talk about the events that took place during the month, comment on them and express your attitude to what is happening. The review in the magazine consisted of small articles relating to the main events of the month. The topics of these articles were placed in the subtitle. So, for example, in the 8th issue of Vestnik Evropy for 1909, the Internal Review consisted of the following articles: Unfulfilled Expectations, His Majesty’s Opposition and the Official Press, Moderately Reactionary Program, Suspension of the newspaper Slovo. Even literary criticism very often took the form of a review.
In the analytical reviews and departments of the chronicle of the thick journal, his ideological program, direction took place. “Journalism, pursuing mainly social and educational goals,” writes D.E. Maksimov, - naturally, put forward reviews and articles, and treated fiction as an inevitable concession to the frivolous reader. Therefore, non-fiction departments (especially political review) were given a lot of space. The Russian thick magazine, especially its journalistic variety, is characterized by a special attitude towards fiction. In the journal, “the works of art placed in it are perceived by the reader, first of all, as the views of the journal itself, and only secondarily as the individual opinions of authors with one or another worldview. The literary personality of a writer participating in an ideologically determined body helps to comprehend and supports not so much individual parts of the journal (an article, a poem, etc.), as the entire journal as a whole.
The type of thick magazine actively dictated its requirements for the literary material placed in the issue. Only works selected by the editor could be published on its pages. In turn, the magazine context or hidden criticism gave the work new shades, often not provided by the writer. “It is known that in traditional Russian journalism of the journalistic type,” D.E. Maksimov, “each ideologically tightly knit organ to some extent depersonalizes the material placed in it, acquiring a special function in it compared to that which would be characteristic of this material outside the journal. The material included in the journal loses its individual shades and turns towards the reader with its total, typological side, both in the ideological and partly in the aesthetic sense.
The ratio of different departments of a thick magazine - fiction, politics, the scientific nature of the issue - determine its character and allow it to be attributed to the encyclopedic, journalistic or literary subtype.
The "usual Russian type" of the journal, adapted to the peculiar conditions of Russia, which is familiar to the interested reader, often dictated its terms to the editors of the journals. For example, Vestnik Evropy, revived in 1866, was conceived in the style of English three-monthly magazines, but by the end of the second year of publication it was forced to become a monthly of the “ordinary Russian type”, since the publication of the magazine once every three months did not suit the reader. .
In 1892 - the journal "World of God", conceived as a publication "for youth and self-education." In the second half of the 1990s, it turned into a socio-political and literary publication of the same "usual Russian type."
The magazine Life, created as a magazine for family reading, Education, originally called Women's Education, and some others that arose in the 90s of the 19th century, inevitably transformed into traditional thick publications.
Factors influencing the reorganization of the formation of new journals, their directions:
Readers' requirements (the desire to see the magazine the way the audience is used to reading it);
· requirements of generalization in the coverage of articles, detailed comments.
Both of these factors are what the thick magazine was so well adapted to.
Late XIX - early XX centuries. - development of newspapers. Magazines are gradually moving away from the leading position in the press system. The journal Sovremennaya Zhizn wrote in 1906 that the thick journals are “too slow and too cumbersome to be the main channels of ideological currents in acute periods of social life. True, their solidity and thoroughness in working out the tasks of the time are much higher than the methods of the frivolous press. But when the center of gravity of interests is not in theoretical, but in practical creativity, as long as there is no free or involuntary lull, reaction - this solidity helps them little.
The main reproach to the thick magazine is its slowness and cumbersomeness. But there were other reasons for the decline in the prestige of publications of this type.
The growth of literacy of the population, the changing political side of people's lives led to a significant increase in the readership, which was interested in a wider range of not only social, but also scientific and cultural problems. The thick magazine, for all its versatility, did not meet the growing demands of readers. Significantly increased interest in scientific problems. Due to this, the magazines again became encyclopedic for a while. But a significant differentiation of sciences, interest in the natural sciences - mathematics, chemistry, medicine, etc. - brought to life a large number of specialized publications for trained readers and popular science for those interested. "Bulletin of knowledge", "Bulletin and library for self-education", "Knowledge for all", "Around the world", "Nature and people" in the XX century. fully solved encyclopedic problems.
The emergence of new literary trends and schools, which caused great public outcry and the intensification of the literary struggle, influenced the thick magazine. To solve complex aesthetic issues, those that appeared at the very end of the 19th century were more suitable. “manifesto magazines”, “World of Art”, “New Way”, “Scales”, etc. Works of art began to be printed in almanacs, issued by numerous publishing houses. The collections of the publishing houses Znanie, Rosehip, Northern Flowers, Scorpion and many others made it possible to show their work without the ideological orientation introduced by the direction of the magazine. However, this does not mean that thick magazines were left without good fiction after the revolution of 1905-1907. many Russian writers returned to solid publications read by the intelligentsia, even trying to give them a predominantly literary character. Theatrical and art reviews are leaving the thick magazine: the development of theater and fine arts, the complication of aesthetic disputes and in these areas contribute to the formation of special publications - theatrical, artistic, musical, etc. .
Despite all the talk about the death of the thick magazine, it did not disappear, but once again proved the viability of the "ordinary Russian" publication in the qualitatively changed system of journalism. Sovremennaya Zhizn turned out to be right: the thick magazine, which had fallen into the shadows during the period of social upheavals, again took its place in the period of calm reaction, when the time came for an in-depth analysis of the revolutionary storms experienced: a magazine of this type once again proved that it was he who was best suited for such work. .
The classic type of thick magazine in the XX century. Vestnik Evropy, Russkoye Bogatstvo, Russkaya Mysl, Mir Bozhy, Sovremenny Mir and other publications remained faithful, but under the influence of social needs they were forced to change.
The journal "New Literary Review" also has a special content from issue to issue. Its structure, consisting of identifying problems in literary theory, historical and literary works (the history of literature in Russia, its connection with the West), articles, reviews, interviews, essays on the problems of Soviet and post-Soviet literary life, reveals "UFO" as "thick magazine". The variety of topics, discussions, journalism, in general, makes it possible to say about the gradual withdrawal of the publishing house's book series from the structure of its eponymous thick magazine.
The so-called "Thick Journals" are essentially literary monthly publications that regularly publish novelties of literature before being published as a separate volume. Many citizens collected entire subscriptions of such journals, creating collections from them.AT the USSR such "thick" magazines should include: " Youth", "Don", "Star", "Ural", "Siberian Lights", "Foreign Literature", "Friendship of Peoples", "Our Contemporary", "Moscow", "Neva", "Banner", "October" , "New World". Also in the kiosks of "Soyuzpechat" one could find small-format "thick" magazines, such as: "Change", "Young Guard", "Aurora".
"Thick" magazines, perhaps not to be confused with other publications. Simple magazines in the USSR was also enough: Soviet Union","Spark","Crocodile","Peasant Woman","Worker". They appeared on the shelves in different ways, either weekly or once a month.
AT the USSR there were also a great many interest magazines for different ages: Journalist","Driving","Sports Games","Health","Chemistry and Life","Knowledge is Power","Technology of Youth","Science and Life","Science and Religion","Pioneer, Bonfire ", "Young naturalist", "Young technician", "Around the world".
Magazine "New World""under the editorship of Tvardovsky himself in 1962 In the year he published the wonderful story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", as well as three more stories by Solzhenitsyn - "The Incident at the Krechetkovka Station", "For the Good of the Cause", "Matryona Dvor".
In the magazine "October" Rybakov's novel "Heavy Sand" and Astafyev's story "The Sad Detective" were printed. The works of Mann, Andersen-Neksö, Dreiser, Barbusse, Rolland, Bredel, Feuchtwanger, Paustovsky, Gaidar, Prishvin, Zoshchenko, Olesha, Yesenin, Platonov, Mayakovsky were printed , Nagibin, Moritz, Iskander, Voznesensky, Vasiliev, Baklanov, Akhmadulina, Adamovich.
In "Znamya" magazine"The fall of Paris" by Ehrenburg, "In the trenches of Stalingrad" by Nekrasov, "Young Guard" by Fadeev, "Son" by Antokolsky, which later became a classic, was printed. Also the military prose of Kazakevich and Grossman. Poetic works of Voznesensky, Akhmatova and Pasternak.
In the first years of perestroika, the Znamya magazine began to publish previously banned works by Platonov, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. Sakharov's Memories began to be published.
In the magazine "Neva"The works of Bykov, Dudintsev, Kaverin, Konetsky, Chukovskaya, Gumilyov, Strugatsky, Granin were published.
It was in the "Neva" that readers got acquainted with such works as: "Blinding Darkness" by Arthur Koestler and Robert Conquest's novel "The Great Terror".
In the "thick" magazine "Moscow"The novel "Master and Margarita" by Bulgakov was published (from December to January 1966-1967).
When perestroika began, Karamzin's work "History of the Russian State" was published in this journal, which, remarkably, was not published during the years of Soviet power.
In the "thick" magazine "Youth"published works by Akhmadulina, Okudzhava, Voznesensky, Tikhonov, Yashin, Rozov, Gladilin, Aleksin, Rubin,
Aksenova.
In "Youth" Kuzntsov's novel "Babi Yar" saw the light of day for the first time.
Circulation of "thick" magazines
The so-called "thick" magazines in the USSR it was possible to purchase only through a big connection. Despite the fact that, for example, the circulation of such a magazine as "Youth" exceeded 3 million pieces. In the kiosks of "Soyuzpechat", they were sorted out almost instantly.
Even in libraries, they could not be taken home, but were issued only in the reading rooms.
In our time, such problems cause only a smile. You can subscribe to any "thieves" magazine without any problems. The circulation of modern "thick" magazines has fallen by orders of magnitude when compared with circulation in the USSR. 7200 pieces, and the magazines "Znamya" and "October" have about 5000 pieces. The once popular magazine "Friendship of Peoples" has only 3000 things.
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