Sovremennik
Encyclopedia
Sovremennik was a Russian literary, social and political magazine, published in St. Petersburg in 1836-1866. It came out four times a year in 1836-1843 and once a month after that. The magazine published poetry, prose, critical, historical, ethnographic, and other material.

Sovremennik originated as a private enterprise of Alexander Pushkin who was running out of money to support his growing family. To assist him with the magazine, the poet asked Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...

, Pyotr Vyazemsky
Pyotr Vyazemsky
Prince Pyotr Andreyevich Vyazemsky or Petr Andreevich Viazemsky was a leading personality of the Golden Age of Russian poetry.- Biography :...

 and Vladimir Odoyevsky to contribute their works to the journal. It was there that the first substantial assortment of Fyodor Tyutchev
Fyodor Tyutchev
Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev is generally considered the last of three great Romantic poets of Russia, following Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov.- Life :...

's poems was published. Soon it became clear that Pushkin's establishment could not compete with Faddey Bulgarin's journal, which published more popular and less demanding literature. Sovremennik was out of date and could not command a paying audience.

When Pushkin died, his friend Pyotr Pletnyov
Pyotr Pletnyov
Pyotr Alexandrovich Pletnyov was a minor Russian poet and literary critic, who rose to become the dean of the Saint Petersburg University and academician of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences ....

 took over the editorship in 1838. A few years later the magazine fell into decline, and Pletnyov handed it over to Nikolay Nekrasov and Ivan Panaev
Ivan Panaev
Ivan Ivanovich Panaev was a Russian writer, literary critic, journalist and magazine publisher.-Early life:Panaev was born into a gentry family in St Petersburg. He graduated from the Boarding School for the Nobility at Saint Petersburg State University in 1830. He began publishing his works in 1834...

 in 1847. It was Nekrasov who really made the magazine profitable. He enlisted the services of Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...

, Ivan Goncharov
Ivan Goncharov
Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov was a Russian novelist best known as the author of Oblomov .- Biography :Ivan Goncharov was born in Simbirsk ; his father was a wealthy grain merchant and respected official who was elected mayor of Simbirsk several times...

, Alexander Herzen
Alexander Herzen
Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen was a Russian pro-Western writer and thinker known as the "father of Russian socialism", and one of the main fathers of agrarian populism...

, and Nikolai Ogaryov. Sovremennik was the first to publish translated works by Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

, George Sand
George Sand
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist and memoirist.-Life:...

, and other best-selling foreign writers.

Although the magazine was owned and run by Nekrasov, its official editor-in-chief was Alexander Nikitenko. The virulent realist critic Vissarion Belinsky
Vissarion Belinsky
Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky was a Russian literary critic of Westernizing tendency. He was an associate of Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin , and other critical intellectuals...

 was responsible for its ideology. His criticism of present-day reality and propaganda of democratic ideas made the journal very popular among the Russian intelligentsia
Intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...

. Sovremenniks circulation was 3,100 copies in 1848.

During the reactionary reign of Nicholas I
Nicholas I of Russia
Nicholas I , was the Emperor of Russia from 1825 until 1855, known as one of the most reactionary of the Russian monarchs. On the eve of his death, the Russian Empire reached its historical zenith spanning over 20 million square kilometers...

, the journal had to struggle against censorship and complaints of disgruntled aristocracy. Its position grew more complicated after Herzen's emigration (1847) and Belinsky's death (1848). Despite these hardships, Sovremennik published works by best Russian authors of the day: Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...

, Turgenev, and Nekrasov. Timofey Granovsky
Timofey Granovsky
Timofey Nikolayevich Granovsky was a founder of mediaeval studies in the Russian Empire.Granovsky was born in Oryol, Russia. He studied at the universities of Moscow and Berlin, where he was profoundly influenced by Hegelian ideas of Leopold von Ranke and Friedrich Karl von Savigny...

, Sergey Solovyov
Sergey Solovyov
Sergey Mikhaylovich Solovyov was one of the greatest Russian historians whose influence on the next generation of Russian historians was paramount. His son Vladimir Solovyov was one of the most influential Russian philosophers...

 and other leading historians were published as well.

The period between 1852 and 1862 is considered to be the most brilliant in the history of the journal. Nekrasov managed to strike a deal with its leading contributors, whereby their new works were to be published exclusively by him. As regards ideology, Sovremennik grew more radical together with its audience. Belinsky was succeeded by Nikolai Chernyshevsky
Nikolai Chernyshevsky
Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky was a Russian revolutionary democrat, materialist philosopher, critic, and socialist...

 in 1853 and by Nikolai Dobrolyubov. All their principal articles were published in Sovremennik.

In late 1858, the magazine entered into polemics with the liberal and conservative press and became a platform for and ideological center of the revolutionary democracy, turning into a political magazine. In 1861, it published materials, dedicated to the emancipation of the serfs and advocated the interests of serfs in the strongest terms possible. In 1859-1861, Sovremennik argued with Herzen's Kolokol about the aims of the Russian democracy.

Such a radical stance alienated those writers who were indifferent to politics or personally disliked revolutionary intelligentsia. Although Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Dmitry Grigorovich
Dmitry Grigorovich
- Early life :Grigorovich was born in Simbirsk, where his family were members of the landed gentry. His father was Russian and his mother French. From 1832 to 1835 he studied at several French and German private schools in Moscow...

 eventually left the magazine, Sovremenniks circulation reached 7,126 copies in 1861. The death of Dobrolyubov in 1861, an 8-month suspension of publishing activities (in June 1862), and Chernyshevsky's arrest caused irreparable damage to the magazine. Its ideological stance became less clear and consistent.

In 1863, Nekrasov managed to resume publishing Sovremennik. He invited Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin , better known by his pseudonym Shchedrin , was a major Russian satirist of the 19th century. At one time, after the death of the poet Nikolai Nekrasov, he acted as editor of the well-known Russian magazine, the Otechestvenniye Zapiski, until it was banned by...

 (stayed until 1864), Maxim Antonovich, Grigory Yeliseyev, and Alexander Pypin to join its editorial staff. Controversy among the members of the editorial staff soon resulted in adoption of a more temperate policy.

In 1863-1866, Sovremennik published Chernyshevsky's What Is To Be Done? (written in the Peter and Paul Fortress
Peter and Paul Fortress
The Peter and Paul Fortress is the original citadel of St. Petersburg, Russia, founded by Peter the Great in 1703 and built to Domenico Trezzini's designs from 1706-1740.-History:...

), satires by Saltykov-Shchedrin, and works by the so-called plebeian authors (Vasily Sleptsov
Vasily Sleptsov
Vasily Alekseyevich Sleptsov , , was a Russian writer and social reformer.-Biography:Sleptsov attended the medical school at Moscow University in 1855-56. He then went to Yaroslavl to try being an actor. He soon returned to Moscow, where he was in government service from 1857 to 1861-62...

, Fyodor Reshetnikov
Fyodor Mikhaylovich Reshetnikov
Fyodor Mikhaylovich Reshetnikov was a Russian author. In his short 29 ½ years he published to critical acclaim a number of novels dealing with the plight of the lower classes.-Early life:...

, Gleb Uspensky
Gleb Uspensky
- Early life :Uspensky was born in the city of Tula, where his father was a government official. He attended the gymnasiums at Tula and Chernihiv, devoting much of his time to the reading of the Russian classics. He studied at the university of St. Petersburg for a short time in 1861, until it was...

). The magazine was closed down in June 1866, owing to the official panic that followed the first attempt on Alexander II's life
Dmitry Karakozov
Dmitry Vladimirovich Karakozov was the first Russian revolutionary to make an attempt on the life of a tsar.Karakozov was born in the family of a minor nobleman in Kostroma...

. After that, Nekrasov and Saltykov-Schedrin acquired the rights to publish the Otechestvenniye Zapiski, a literary journal widely viewed as Sovremenniks successor.
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