Ogoniok is one of the oldest weekly illustrated magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

s in Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, issued since . It was re-established in the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 in 1923 by Mikhail Koltsov

Mikhail Koltsov

Mikhail Efimovich Koltsov , born Mikhail Efimovich Fridlyand , was a Soviet journalist.-Biography:...

.

The colour magazine reached the pinnacle of its popularity in the Perestroika

Perestroika

Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...

 years, when its editor-in-chief Vitaly Korotich

Vitaly Korotich

Vitaly Korotich is a Soviet, Ukrainian and Russian writer and journalist,.Vitaly Korotich was born in 1936 in Kiev. In 1959 he graduated from the Kiev Medical University. Vitaly Korotich worked as a doctor between 1959 and 1966. Later, he became as a full-time writer, and served as an officer of...

 "was guiding Ogoniok to a pro-American and pro-capitalist position". Those years are the subject matter of the book Small Fires: Letters From the Soviet People to Ogonyok Magazine 1987-1990 (Summit Books, NY, 1990) selected and edited by Christopher Cerf

Christopher Cerf

Christopher Cerf is a U.S. author, composer-lyricist, voice actor, and record and television producer. He is known for his musical contributions to Sesame Street, for co-creating and co-producing the award-winning PBS literacy education television program Between the Lions, and for his humorous...

, Marina Albee, and with an introduction by Korotich.

In the early 1990s, Ogoniok was owned by Boris Berezovsky, and its popularity started to decline. Viktor Loshak, the former editor of Moskovskiye Novosti

Moskovskiye Novosti

Moskovskiye Novosti will be a daily newspaper in Russia to be relaunched in 2011.It was previously a long-established weekly newspaper aimed at an educated, elite audience. In 2005-2008 it was owned by Arcadi Gaydamak. It is published in the Russian language...

, took over as editor in 2003. , it was published by the Russian OVA-PRESS publishing house. At the height of the 2008–2009 Russian financial crisis

2008–2009 Russian financial crisis

The 2008–2009 Russian financial crisis, part of the world Economic crisis of 2008, was a crisis in the Russian financial markets as well as an economic recession that was compounded by political fears after the war with Georgia and by the plummeting price of Urals heavy crude oil, which lost more...

, in January 2009, the publication was suspended due to an ownership change.

After a four-month break, publication of Ogoniok was resumed on May 18, 2009, by Kommersant Publishing Group. The first issue published by Kommersant

Kommersant

Kommersant is a commerce-oriented newspaper published in Russia. , the circulation was 131,000.- History :The newspaper was initially published in 1909, and it was closed down following the Bolshevik seizure of power and the introduction of censorship in 1917.In 1989, with the onset of press...

is the 5079th Ogoniok since 1899.

External links

• Defunct official website (archival version)
• Archive 1945-1982