Otechestvennye Zapiski (Отечественные записки, i.e., "Annals of the Fatherland", "Patriotic Notes") was a
RussiaRussia 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 magazineA 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 St Petersburg on a monthly basis between 1818 and 1884. The journal served liberal-minded readers, known as the
intelligentsiaThe 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...
. Such major novels as
Ivan GoncharovIvan 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...
's
OblomovOblomov is the best known novel by Russian writer Ivan Goncharov, first published in 1859. Oblomov is also the central character of the novel, often seen as the ultimate incarnation of the superfluous man, a symbolic character in 19th-century Russian literature...
(1859) and
Fyodor DostoevskyFyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. He is best known for his novels Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov....
's
The Adolescent (1875) made their first appearance in
Otechestvennye Zapiski.
Founded by
Pavel SvinyinPavel Petrovich Svinyin or Svinin was a prolific Russian writer, painter, and editor known as a "Russian Munchausen" for many exaggerated accounts of his travels....
in 1818, the journal was published irregularly until 1820. It was closed down in 1830 but resurfaced several years later, with Andrey Krayevsky as its publisher. The renovated magazine regularly published articles by
Vissarion BelinskyVissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky was a Russian literary critic of Westernizing tendency. He was an associate of Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin , and other critical intellectuals...
and
Alexander HerzenAleksandr 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...
, catering to well-educated liberals. Other notable contributors included:
- Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism. He has also often been called the father of anarchist theory in general. Bakunin grew up near Moscow, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French Encyclopedists,...
- 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...
- Nikolay Nekrasov
- 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...
- Vladimir Dahl
- Vladimir Odoyevsky
- Aleksey Pisemsky
Aleksey Feofilaktovich Pisemsky was a Russian novelist and dramatist who was regarded as an equal of Ivan Turgenev and Fyodor Dostoevsky during his lifetime, but whose reputation suffered a spectacular decline in the 20th century. A realistic playwright, along with Aleksandr Ostrovsky he was...
- Afanasy Fet
Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet , was a Russian poet regarded as one of the finest lyricists in Russian literature.-Origins:...
In 1846 Nekrasov persuaded Belinsky and other contributors to leave
Otechestvennye Zapiski for his own
SovremennikSovremennik 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...
. As a result, the former declined in circulation and influence. It was overshadowed by the more radical
Sovremennik for 20 years, until the latter was banned in 1866.
In 1868 Nekrasov acquired
Otechestvennye Zapiski from Krayevsky and started editing it jointly with Saltykov-Shchedrin. After Nekrasov's death Saltykov-Schedrin was its sole editor-in-chief, radicalizing the journal even further. In the 1870s it was transformed into a mouthpiece of the
NarodnikNarodniks was the name for Russian socially conscious members of the middle class in the 1860s and 1870s. Their ideas and actions were known as Narodnichestvo which can be translated as "Peopleism", though is more commonly rendered "populism"...
movement.
Despite Saltykov's mastery of "
AesopAesop was a Greek writer credited with a number of popular fables. Older spellings of his name have included Esop and Isope. Although his existence remains uncertain and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a...
ian" language, the tsarist authorities closed
Otechestvennye zapiski in 1884 as "an organ of the press which not only opens its pages to the spread of dangerous ideas, but even has as its closest collaborators people who belong to secret societies".
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