The Russian political history and the history of Russian literature are closely linked.

Since
the 19th century Russian magazines had both a political stance and a literary proposal and
were known as "literary and social magazines", that is, each of them belonged to a part of
the Russian political spectrum and were never solely literary. An example of that is the
liberal magazine Time where the Saint Petersburg writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky published
many of his writings. Since then and until today, the literary magazines are a clear
expression of the history of the Russian people. Therefore, the study of Russian thick
journals is important for a deeper understanding of the political, social and cultural
mentality in Russia.
The founder of literary journals in the Russian Empire was Nikolai Karamzim in the early
19th century. In the era of Aleksander II's reforms in the mid-19th century, magazines
played a very important role in literature and in the political vision of the intelligentsia, as
they contained a large section of political, economic and social analysis, as well as
scientific articles coupled with literary fiction. There were no political parties in Russia
until 1905, but the magazines had a specific political bent. There were the monarchical
journals of the extreme right such as The Russian Herald, the radical left journals such as
The Contemporary and The Russian War. Also of a liberal nature such as The Herald of
Europe and populists such as The Russian Wealth, among others.
Within all these years and until the revolution, the number of literary magazines remained
between seven and ten, since they always remained within the possibility of a political
spectrum, as Ludmilla Turkevich points out in her article "Soviet Literary Periodicals" in the
Journal Books Abroard. Vol. 32, No. 4 (Autumn, 1958).
In the Soviet Union, with Stalin's arrival to power, the totalitarian regime managed to
eliminate all literary magazines that did not coincide with the policy carried out at that
time, due in part to the terror that invaded the population due to the deportations and
assassinations of political dissidents, as described by Klaus Mehnert in his book "Soviet
Man and his world" (1962). It was not until the spring of Khrushev that the number of
literary magazines was restored and a great milestone occurred in the history of Russian
literature and politics: the publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel “One Day in the
Life of Ivan Denisovich” in the New World Magazine in November 1962. It described the
terrible conditions in which prisoners of forced labor were subjected during the Stalinist
regime, and for the first time in the Soviet Union a wide public had access to a text that
spoke out against the Stalinist regime.
After Khrushev's dismissal the repression continued and the number of literary magazines
decreased again until Gorbachev's glasnost, where many magazines were published again.
During this period, an important text by Aleksander Solzhenitsy, The Gulag Archipelago,
was also published again in the New World magazine.
After 1992, the circulation of thick literary magazines decreased considerably due to the
economic crisis after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Gradually the magazines were
reestablished along with Russia's economic stability from 2000.
Today there are a large number of Russian literary magazines with different political and
artistic positions in both print and digital formats on pages such as
https://magazines.gorky.media/. You can find everything from long-established magazines
such as "New World", "Volga" and "New Journal" to new proposals such as "Ural",
"Prosodia" and "SlovoWord".
As it can be seen, literary magazines have had an enormous influence on the formation of
critical thinking both politically and culturally in the history of Russia and that is why
literature plays a very important role in the life of Russian citizens.