Zvezda is a 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...

n literary magazine

Literary magazine

A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...

 published in Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

 since 1924. It began as a bimonthly, but has been monthly since 1927.

History

The first issue of Zvezda appeared in January 1924, with Ivan Maisky as editor-in-chief. Katerina Clark writes, in a discussion of the new journals founded at this time:

Unlike Moscow, Petrograd was given only one "thick" journal, the Star (Zvezda), which was less important and had a smaller circulation than its Moscow counterparts, which were thus able to lure away the more successful or acceptable Petrograd writers.... [Zvezda] functioned as a medium through which fringe figures on the left (proletarian extremists) and the right (such as Pilnyak, Pasternak

Boris Pasternak

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language...

, and Mandelshtam

Osip Mandelstam

Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam was a Russian poet and essayist who lived in Russia during and after its revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets...

) could publish. While this situation afforded Petrograd the role of the more honorable, less compromised city, to some it seemed the town of the has-beens.

Aside from the authors mentioned by Clark, in its early years Zvezda published Maxim Gorky

Maxim Gorky

Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...

, Nikolay Zabolotsky

Nikolay Zabolotsky

Nikolay Alexeyevich Zabolotsky - a Russian poet, children's writer and translator. He was a Modernist and one of the founders of the Russian avant-garde absurdist group Oberiu.-Life and work:...

, Mikhail Zoshchenko

Mikhail Zoshchenko

-Biography:Zoshchenko was born in 1895, in Poltava, but spent most of his life in St. Petersburg / Leningrad. His Ukrainian father was a mosaicist responsible for the exterior decoration of the Suvorov Museum in Saint Petersburg. The future writer attended the Faculty of Law at the Saint Petersburg...

, Veniamin Kaverin

Veniamin Kaverin

Veniamin Alexandrovich Kaverin was a Soviet writer associated with the early 1920s movement of the Serapion Brothers. The immunologist Lev Zilber was his older brother, and the critic Yury Tynyanov was his brother-in-law....

, Nikolai Klyuev

Nikolai Klyuev

Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev , was a notable Russian poet...

, Boris Lavrenyov

Boris Lavrenyov

Boris Andreyevich Lavrenyov , born July 5 , 1891 in Kherson, died January 7, 1959 in Moscow, was a Soviet Russian writer and playwright....

, Konstantin Fedin

Konstantin Fedin

-Biography:Born in Saratov of humble origins, Fedin studied in Moscow and Germany and was interned there during World War I. After his release he worked as an interpreter in the first Soviet embassy in Berlin...

, Vladislav Khodasevich

Vladislav Khodasevich

Vladislav Felitsianovich Khodasevich was an influential Russian poet and literary critic who presided over the Berlin circle of Russian emigre litterateurs....

, and Yury Tynyanov

Yury Tynyanov

Yury Nikolaevich Tynyanov was a famous Soviet/Russian writer, literary critic, translator, scholar and screenwriter. He was an authority on Pushkin and an important member of the Russian Formalist school.-Life and work:...

, among others. It survived the difficult circumstances of the Siege of Leningrad

Siege of Leningrad

The Siege of Leningrad, also known as the Leningrad Blockade was a prolonged military operation resulting from the failure of the German Army Group North to capture Leningrad, now known as Saint Petersburg, in the Eastern Front theatre of World War II. It started on 8 September 1941, when the last...

, and after the war published works by such writers as Vera Panova

Vera Panova

-Early life:Vera was born into the family of an impoverished merchant in Rostov-on-Don, Russia. Her father, Fyodor Ivanovich Panov, built canoes and yachts as a hobby, and founded two yachting clubs in Rostov. When she was five her father drowned in the Don River. After her father's death, her...

, Daniil Granin

Daniil Granin

Daniil Alexandrovich Granin is an author born in the former Soviet Union. He started writing in the 1930s when he was still an engineering student at the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute...

, Vsevolod Kochetov, and Yury German. However, it was severely criticized during the Zhdanovschina cultural attacks of 1946 for publishing Zoshchenko and Anna Akhmatova

Anna Akhmatova

Anna Andreyevna Gorenko , better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova , was a Russian and Soviet modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon.Harrington p11...

.

Today it is collectively owned by its editorial staff. Its regular sections are "Russia and the Caucasus," "Philosophical commentary," "Memoirs of the 20th century," "People and fate," and "Prose and verse." Once a year it publishes a special issue dedicated to a prominent author or phenomenon.

Editors-in-chief

• 1924 — Ivan Maisky
• 1925-1926 — Georgy Gorbachev
• 1926-1928 — Petr Petrovsky
• 1929-1937 — Yury Libedinsky
• 1939-1940 — Georgy Kholopov
• 1945-1946 — Vissarion Sayanov
• 1946-1947 — Aleksandr Egolin
• 1947-1957 — Valery Druzin
• 1957-1989 — Georgy Kholopov
• 1989-1991 — Gennady Nikolaev
• 1992-        — Yakov Gordin and Andrei Aryev

Circulation

• 1927 — 5,000
• 1954 — 60,000
• 1975-1983 — about 115,000
• 1989 — 190,000
• 1990 — 344,000
• 1991 — 141,000
• 2005 — 4,300
• 2006 — 3,400