Subject: Literature

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.

Influential literary journal highlighting writing from across the Soviet Union.

Founded in March 1939 on the initiative of Maxim Gorky, Druzhba Narodov (Дружба народов, Friendship of the Peoples) is one of the Soviet Union’s most influential literary “thick journals” and a major institution of Russian-language publishing across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The journal began as an almanac designed to bring the literature of the Soviet republics into a shared cultural forum. Its core mission was to introduce readers in the Russian-language center to prose, poetry, and literary commentary produced across the USSR’s many languages—Uzbek, Georgian, Armenian, and many others—through publication in Russian translation.

After a wartime hiatus (June 1941–October 1943), the publication resumed, eventually establishing a bimonthly schedule in 1949 and transitioning to a monthly journal in 1955. During the Soviet era, Druzhba Narodov operated under the auspices of the Union of Soviet Writers and became one of the principal platforms for the state doctrine of “friendship among nations.” The journal helped consolidate a tradition of literary translation as a high-status intellectual craft, with leading Russian poets and writers serving as translators and adapters—including Boris Pasternak, Nikolai Zabolotsky, Pavel Antokolsky, Semyon Lipkin, Arseny Tarkovsky, and others.

Across decades, the journal published a wide range of major Soviet and post-Soviet authors and critics, including Viktor Astafiev, Vasyl Bykov, Rasul Gamzatov, Fazil Iskander, Bulat Okudzhava, Anatoly Rybakov, Alexander Tvardovsky, Vasily Shukshin, Lev Gumilev, Kornelii Chukovsky, Svetlana Alexievich, and many others. Its pages document shifting literary and political climates from the late Stalin period through Khrushchev’s Thaw, the era of late Soviet stagnation, the rupture of perestroika, and the cultural realignments of the post-1991 period. Following the dissolution of the USSR, Druzhba Narodov moved from being an official organ of the Union of Writers to an independent, privately published journal.

The Druzhba Narodov Digital Archive supports advanced research and teaching by providing a fully digitized, searchable corpus that can be used to trace authors, themes, genres, regions, and translation practices over time. It is particularly valuable for scholarship on Soviet cultural policy, center-periphery relations, literary translation and mediation, nationalism and multinationalism, and the evolving relationship between literature and public discourse.

The archive provides comprehensive online access to a major institution of Russian-language publishing for nearly nine decades. The fully digitized 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, complete original graphics, and a user-friendly bilingual interface in Russian and English, the searchable database enables efficient exploration of key literary content. The archive is cross-searchable with numerous other Infoteka digital resources.