Region: Russia

Key publication chronicling Soviet and post-Soviet literature, history, and public thought.

Neva (Нева, Neva) is one of Russia’s most prominent “thick journals,” published monthly in St. Petersburg since April 1955. Founded as the official organ of the Leningrad Writers’ Organization, Neva quickly established itself as a central platform for Soviet and post-Soviet literature, history, and public thought. Over the decades, it has brought together many of the country’s most important voices in prose, poetry, criticism, and public affairs.

Among its contributors were Mikhail Zoshchenko, Mikhail Sholokhov, Veniamin Kaverin, Lev Gumilyov, Dmitry Likhachov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Daniil Granin, the Strugatsky brothers, Vladimir Dudintsev, and Vasil Bykaŭ. A number of works first published in Neva went on to receive State Prizes and wide recognition, including Dudintsev’s novel White Robes. The journal was also one of the first in the USSR to introduce readers to Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror and Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon.

While grounded in the traditions of St. Petersburg literary culture, Neva has consistently balanced classic and emerging voices, Russian and émigré literature, fiction and documentary prose. Its sections—ranging from “Prose and Poetry” to “History of the Present,” “Criticism and Essays,” and “Petersburg Book World”—have offered readers both creative works and unique historical testimony, including valuable archival discoveries.

The Neva Digital Archive offers scholars the complete run of Neva from its first issue in 1955, with an additional year’s worth of content available for purchase on an annual basis. Featuring full page-level digitization and complete original graphics, each issue has been carefully digitized and split into individual articles with permanent URLs, making it easier for researchers to create accurate citations in their work. Featuring full page-level digitization, complete original graphics, and a user-friendly bilingual interface in Russian and English, the searchable database enables efficient access to seventy years of Russian cultural, intellectual, and literary life, preserved in its original context. The archive is cross-searchable with numerous other Infoteka digital resources.

Influential literary periodical of the Soviet and post-Soviet period.

Nash Sovremennik (Наш современник, Our Contemporary) was established in 1956 in Moscow on the basis of the Maxim Gorky-founded literary journal Al’manakh (Альманах, Almanac; pub. 1933–1955, suspended 1940–1947). One of the esteemed Soviet/Russian “thick journals,” Nash Sovremennik was published under the auspices of the RSFSR Union of Writers and was one of the most popular and well-respected Soviet literary periodicals. Unlike many of its contemporary counterparts that tended to attract writers and young talent from a more urban intellectual setting, Nash Sovremennik was a pioneer in finding talent from the Russian glubinka and remote provinces, providing these writers with an important literary platform unavailable elsewhere. As a result, the journal came to be associated with the so-called “village” or “provincial prose,” with some of its most important representatives being such writers as Fyodor Abramov, Viktor Astafyev, Vasily Belov, and Vasily Shukshin, among others.

Though largely faithful to Marxist-Leninist precepts since its founding, during the last years of the Soviet Union the journal underwent dramatic ideological reformulations, moving away from communist orthodoxy to Russian neo-Slavophile conservatism and patriotism that fiercely opposed Western political and literary trends on ideological grounds. At the height of its popularity in the 1990s Nash Sovremennik would boast a circulation of nearly half a million copies.

Led by Stanislav Kunyayev since 1989, the journal has become an important literary and journalistic vehicle for Russian conservatives and traditionalists, attracting such political and literary figures as Gennadi Zyuganov, Nikolay Ryzhkov, Sergey Kara-Murza, Aleksandr Prokhanov, Zakhar Prilepin, and the controversial late Metropolital Ioann (Snychev).

The Nash Sovremennik Digital Archive includes all obtainable issues of Al’manakh and Nash Sovremennik published from 1933 on, with an additional year’s worth of content available for purchase on an annual basis. The archive offers scholars the most comprehensive collection available for this title, and features full page-level digitization and complete original graphics. The archive has searchable text and is cross-searchable with numerous other Infoteka digital resources.

Key publication chronicling nearly 70 years of Russian literary and cultural development.

Moskva (Москва, Moscow) has shaped the cultural life of Soviet and Russian society since 1957. Moskva stands among the prestigious “thick journals” of Russia and the USSR that defined the intellectual landscape of their time.

The journal has consistently published works by contemporary writers, including prose, poetry, journalism, and criticism. Moskva holds particular historical significance as the first publisher of Mikhail Bulgakov’s masterpiece The Master and Margarita and Nikolai Karamzin’s monumental work History of the Russian State. Its pages have featured outstanding works of Russian literature by authors such as Bunin, Sholokhov, and Yulian Semyonov, alongside acclaimed international writers including Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner.

Uniquely among thick journals, Moskva maintains a section called “Home Church,” which introduces readers to religious values. The journal has served as an intellectual anchor for the intelligentsia, helping to bridge the spiritual divide between past and future. Today, Moskva continues to articulate the ideological doctrine of modernity, uphold Russian ideas, explore traditions of Russian thought, and carefully preserve the excellence of the Russian literary language.

The Moskva Digital Archive offers scholars the most comprehensive collection available for this title, with an additional year’s worth of content available for purchase on an annual basis. Featuring full page-level digitization and complete original graphics, each issue has been carefully digitized and split into individual articles with permanent URLs, making it easier for researchers to create accurate citations in their work. Featuring full page-level digitization, complete original graphics, and a user-friendly bilingual interface in Russian and English, the searchable database enables efficient exploration of key literary works, critical essays, and editorial content that shaped Russian intellectual discourse throughout the 20th century. The archive is cross-searchable with numerous other Infoteka digital resources.